- → “Five hundred years from now, people are not gonna remember which faction came out on top in Iraq, or Syria, or whatever. But they will remember what we do to make their civilization possible. This is the most important thing we can do in this time. If you have it in your power to do something great, and wonderful, and powerful, then you should.”
“It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. This is the forecast for an age of peace." — Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in a 1954 address to scientists.
- 9:12 - We choose to go to the Moon,” Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
- We have had our failures, but so have others even if the don’t admit them and they may be less public. To be sure we are behind, and we will stay behind for some time in manned flight, but we do not intend to stay behind. In this decade we shall make up and move ahead.
- I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.
- However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.
- Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you.
- → The 1st 15 seconds: “We have been given the scientific knowledge, the technical ability and the materials to pursue the exploration of the universe. To ignore these great resources would be a corruption of a god given ability.”
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." — J.R.R. Tolkien
- → "Right, back to work". I know some call MI6 tribute to Bond cold and rather disrespectful as it's a minute memorial within a working day, but I found it perfect. He was incinerated, no body or ashes available for a proper funeral. The Jack London quote perfectly summed up Bond as a whole. As of "right, back to work", he's gone, literally nothing they can do. The world doesn't stop spinning. And life must go on. Short but sweet. Truth be told, less is more.
