“Science does not just drive space travel - space travel also drives sc...” — Leroy Chiao Quote

“Science does not just drive space travel - space travel also drives science.”

“I don't think anyone flies into space without some form of fundamental introspection about what life is about.”

“Growing up in the 1960s, I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by airplanes and rockets.”

“There were different challenges along the way. Certainly the food shortage was unpleasant.”

“As astronauts know better than anyone else, risks, incidents, and mishaps are inevitable in the development of any high-performance vehicle. The emergence of supersonic flight during the 1940s and of the Century Series of fighters in the 1950s came with the loss of several test pilots. Still, it was a glorious time.”

“Donald Trump's administration is floating a proposal to return to the moon - and to shut down the International Space Station to help pay for it. The first part of this idea is good. The second is horrible.”

“Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.”

“One has to grow old to understand the functioning of science. Then one may remember the papers which a long time ago aroused great interest and one may compare them to the present-day textbooks. [...] History becomes smooth, too smooth in writing. Right starts are forgotten, wrong expeditions into the desert disappear without a trace. Only a few papers will be cited.”

“The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition and cruel might. Crowned force has governed ignorance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny—two vultures—have fed upon the liberties of man. From all these there has been, and is, but one means of escape—intellectual development. Upon the back of industry has been the whip. Upon the brain have been the fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished. Reading, writing, thinking and investigating have all been crimes.”

“I'm not a nerd, I'm the manufacturing plant of humanitarian nerds, whose nationality is humanity, whose worship is reason, whose madness is world uplift, whose culture is integration.”