Best Astronaut Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“I'd love to go to America - I'd love to be an astronaut. I'd love to just do loads of different crazy - like be a cowgirl - just do loads of different crazy stuff like that.”

“How many actresses get to say that they played an astronaut? Those roles don't come easy.”

“To me, fighting in Strikeforce was a dream, like saying 'I want to be an astronaut and go to the moon.' You don't think that it's actually is going to happen, you just wish it.”

“I like the fact that, as an actor, one day I can be the president. I can be an astronaut.”

“From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.”

“When I became an astronaut, I was an engineer.”

“Becoming an astronaut was a little bit of happenstance for me.”

“I seriously feel like Bowie was an astronaut who went into space and experienced things and brought back these... treasures.”

“The biggest honor is to be an astronaut. It's such a tremendous privilege to be able to represent humankind in our quest to explore space.”

“If I have a daughter and she grows up to be an astronaut, she's gonna end up on a Black History Month stamp.”

“I was a rough kid. And this is all I ever wanted to do. I never wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't want to do anything else but box.”

“The odds of becoming a NASA astronaut - you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning.”

“In the '60s astronauts were rockstars. Everyone wanted to be an astronaut.”

“Because Blue Peter can get you access to places - if you go to somewhere like Nasa, you don't just see what most people see, you can get a lot of behind the scenes access. You can talk to an astronaut.”

“Clearly, when I first started talking about the fact that I wanted to be an astronaut, I was in primary school, so people understand that we want to be all kinds of things then. It's not a big deal.”

“Growing up, people will tell you that you have a better chance to become an astronaut than becoming an NBA player. So when you finally get to the NBA, you've beat the odds. So when you put on that jersey, everything else is downhill.”

“My quest to expand access to space began more than a decade ago, when I teamed up with Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites to build SpaceShipOne. This innovative air-launched vehicle was the world's first private spacecraft to carry an astronaut into sub-orbital space.”

“Being an astronaut, there are not a lot of things that have really shocked me in my life.”

“The whole Hubble program has just been a fabulous testament to the NASA science community and the NASA astronaut community.”

“From as young as I can remember, I wanted to be - in order - an astronaut, a geologist, and a biologist.”

“What guy didn't want to be an astronaut growing up?”

“Of course, as a kid, I had no idea what was practical: I wanted to be a paleontologist, then an astronaut.”

“I grew up in Greeley, Colorado, in a house without a television set. I was a very nerdy kid: I used to play 'astronaut' and eat bouillon as astronaut food. We also had tons of books.”

“Tell your daughters and their daughters that if they want to be a firewoman, they can be a firewoman. If they want to be an astronaut, they can be an astronaut. If they want to run their own business or run for president, they can do whatever they put their mind to.”

“My parents are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I feel like it's an old Southern thing where people say that, as a kid, you can be an astronaut or a ballerina or a singer, but as a grown person, you need to go and get a job.”

“I never declared I wanted to be an astronaut, as I considered that was presumptuous.”

“I didn't really realize that writing... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.”

“I was 8 when we landed on the moon. I was so into the space program as a kid. Eventually, I realized it was very unlikely that a Mexican kid in the early '70s was going to be an astronaut.”

“I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I grew up in Houston. Gordo Cooper was my favorite astronaut.”

“Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman.”

“If my vision was good enough, I'd be an astronaut.”

“There is no one area of chemical engineering that specifically helped me in my career as an astronaut, it was more the general education in engineering. Also, it was a very difficult and rigorous course. So, it made me strong and resourceful.”

“I think doing something of your life is something that you've got deep inside, whether it's to, whether you want to be an astronaut or a, whether you want to do science, or whether you want to be a movie star, or whatever.”

“I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.”

“When I first went to Hubble, as an astronomer and as a scientist, it was a dream come true. And as an astronaut, the Hubble missions are premiere missions because Hubble is so important to science, so important to humanity, that it's just a very special event. But as an astronomer, it was sort of the holy grail of missions.”

“Most of my family and friends are very familiar with the human space flight program and with the excitement of becoming an astronaut.”

“There's a lot of things I nerd out over. Quantum Mechanics. I also love Dungeons and Dragons. I want to be an astronaut.”

“I remember reading about Mae Jemison, that astronaut. That was immensely fantastic to me. This woman went to the moon!”

“My feelings are 'Godspeed, John Glenn.' But I feel badly that he took a spot away from a young astronaut who had probably waited three or four years for that slot. He's already had his ticker-tape parade.”

“I've always hankered after going into space and walking on the moon and Mars. I did want to be an astronaut, and had there been a manned space flight programme in the U.K., I would have been knocking on the door.”

“By my mid-30s, I just thought, 'This is not going to happen. I am never going to become an astronaut in the U.K.'”

“I get a call - said, do you want to be an astronaut? I said, oh, my gosh, yes. And he said, be here on Monday to take these tests. I had needles stuck in every part of my body, tubes running up my bottom, so I went along with it. It didn't bother me.”

“I wanted to be an astronaut and wanted to go to space camp, but then I found out that I was too short to become an astronaut. My mom really made me believe that if I worked hard enough and if I really wanted to do it, I could do it.”

“I got a hold of NASA, four times, I said, 'I want to become an astronaut.' But nobody would take me. I didn't think that I would ever get to go up.”

“I really feel like, on my first mission, the first mission is when you prove yourself and hopefully deserve the privilege to continue as an astronaut and remain in the corps and get granted an opportunity for a second mission.”

“I have gone through so many examinations of what a hero is, between the World War II stuff and the astronaut stuff.”

“I would certainly encourage young people to pursue their dreams. It isn't always an easy path, but it's worth going after. And I figure if a farmer's daughter from Iowa can become an astronaut, you can be just about anything you want to be.”

“That I even get to play a sold-out show where people know the words and I'm singing about things I'm connected to is such a blessing. It's the equivalent of a nine-year-old saying, 'I want to be an astronaut when I grow up,' and then getting to go to the moon.”

“I grew up in Texas City, Texas. I didn't know anybody who was a director or whose parents or grandparents were directors. I met somebody from a nearby town one time whose father had been to the moon - it was far more likely to be an astronaut than it was to be a writer or a director.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be in business or politics, like a CEO of a big corporation or a U.S. senator. There were also times I wanted to be an astronaut or a military officer. Yes, there were moments when I thought about doing this as a woman.”

“I always wanted to be an astronaut.”

“Ideas for stories come to me based on my life, so who knows? If somebody sends me to become an astronaut, that's what I'll end up writing.”

“I always wanted to be an astronaut.”

“Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things.”

“In the Astronaut Office we're never totally out of training, we always keep our hand in it. But after five years, things have changed and so it's been good to get back into the flow and relearn a lot of things.”

“Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. With me, it stuck more than most kids. Ever since I was little, I wanted to do it.”

“I wanted to become an astronaut because I believe that the exploration of space by humans is extremely important.”

“It's a little surprising to me that I'm the first Houstonian to be an astronaut.”

“I started out as a farm girl in Iowa, and I dreamed of being an astronaut and an explorer. And I made it.”

“When I was in Class Four, I wanted to be an astronaut. I am still fascinated with the universe. I decided I wanted to be an actor when I was in Class Eight.”

“I think it's reasonable: you can own your nerd credibility when you're an astronaut.”

“It takes an astronaut so long to get to space - that's how long it takes to catch up on my music.”

“It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk.”

“Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also.”

“I've done a lot of astronaut training through the world, Russia, America. And I could always beat the guys on what they were doing because I was always stronger and I've always done everything on my own.”

“Being a leading man... that's like saying, 'I want to be astronaut.' That's not going to happen.”

“Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.”

“I first told my parents that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 3 years old.”

“And, so I set my goals on astronaut because, as a military aviator, it was, I considered that to be about the peak of a flying career.”

“Army astronauts have a very proud legacy in the astronaut program.”

“The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.”

“Houston is where I grew up and luckily I didn't have to go far to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut.”

“It's extremely humbling to look around the astronaut office, see how much experience there is, see how many lessons there are to learn and it's truly starting at square one.”

“My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.”

“I actually wanted to be an astronaut, but I don't have a mathematical brain.”

“Children often ask me, they say, 'Well, how do you become a fighter pilot, or how do you become an astronaut, or...?' And I say, 'Love what you're doing and do it very well.'”

“We fly to 106 kilometers. We've always had as our mission that we always wanted to fly above the Karman line because we didn't want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you're an astronaut or not.”

“As a kid, I was obsessed with space. Well, I was obsessed with nuclear science too, to a point, but before that, I was obsessed with space, and I was really excited about, you know, being an astronaut and designing rockets, which was something that was always exciting to me.”

“As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.”

“My heart would race when I went to Pacific Science Center because I would pretend to be an astronaut, and now I get to come back and give back to the community that I think compelled me to where I am.”

“Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.”

“The stupidest thing I ever did was turn down 'Terms of Endearment' to do 'Cannonball Run II.' Jim Brooks wrote the part of the astronaut for me. Taking that role would have been a way to get all the things I wanted.”

“Somehow, I knew you had to have perfect eyesight to be a test pilot, and so that was it for my astronaut career.”

“I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and I can't recall ever not wanting to be an astronaut.”

“There was a small window when I wanted to be an astronaut. It may have coincided with not getting cast in a high school play.”

“My name is Leland Tyler Wayne. My mom wanted to give me a name where, no matter what I wanted to do, I'd be able to do it. An astronaut. President. Whatever.”

“I've always been somebody who wants to have my hands in all of the baskets, and I would go through these obsessive periods when I was younger. Like, I wanted to be the first female president or an astronaut, so I learned as much as I possibly could about those topics until I was over it.”

“Well, the coolest thing I have seen so far, in terms of, like, me being an astronaut and seeing something unusual, was the rendezvous, the docking of a Progress spaceship.”

“When I was younger, humans went to the moon when I was about 4 years old, and I imagined that as I got older and became an adult that traveling in space was going to be fairly common and something that we all did. So I grew up believing that I'll be an astronaut just like these guys were that were going to the moon.”

“I wish that I was one of those kids who grew up saying I always wanted to be an astronaut and was really good at science and math. But that wasn't really the case. I always liked it, but I never believed I was one of the smart kids.”

“Never in a million years would I have thought I could have been an astronaut candidate.”

“At the age of six, I declared that I wanted to be an astronaut. My mother thought that was just fine, as it would encourage me to learn science, and besides, there really was no chance I would ever actually become an astronaut.”

“I had always wanted to pursue music. It was always a dream, but it was always a dream in the sense of, when you're young, 'I want to be president' or 'I want to be an astronaut and fly to Mars.' That's what it was to me.”

“The clothes are different: pre-dog, I used to be very finicky and self-conscious about how I looked; now I schlep around in the worst clothing - big heavy boots, baggy old sweaters, a hooded down parka from L.L. Bean that makes me look like an astronaut.”

“From day one, I have been told I am no different from the male astronauts. As a pilot, I flew in the sky. Now that I am an astronaut, I will fly in space.”

“Is there any other job that beats being an astronaut? Who didn't want to be an astronaut? That is my question.”

“I saw this movie 'The Right Stuff' when I was in college, and it really rekindled my interest in being an astronaut. I started taking those steps, and then I realized it would be the chance of a lifetime. It would be a dream life: not just a job, but the whole life.”

“I've been lucky enough to do theatre, film, and television for a career. Unless I get offered a job as an astronaut, I won't stray too far from it.”

“The basic thing you have to understand is everything that happens on that spaceship, from the time you crawl into that seat to the time it touches down, is controlled from the ground. There's no one thing that makes a good astronaut. I don't know any person with determination and will that can't go to space.”

“When I became an astronaut, I knew I wanted to pursue long-duration flight aboard the station. I knew it would be a just a tremendous personal challenge, and I looked forward to it.”