“Fear connotes something that interferes with what you’re doing.”

“If you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, you can see the burn patterns on Friendship 7.”

“There is still no cure for the common birthday.”

“Probably, had World War II not come along and intervened, I would have tried to be a doctor. My son's a doctor, and I still take some medical journals to this day.”

“The space station is the most unique laboratory we've ever built. The reason we have it is to do research on materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals - the possibilities are nearly endless.”

“Quite often, while I'm getting up in the morning, I think my warranty is running out on these body parts because it's not working quite the way it used to.”

“The best space movie in my view is 'Apollo 13.' That's just the way it happened.”

“An end of something means the beginning of something else, and I don't think that something else is going to be the death of the manned space program.”

“I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.”

“I can't say I've ever had a dream about space or that I ponder it all the time.”

“Old folks have dreams and ambitions too, like everybody else. Don't sit on a couch someplace.”