Quotes from Mae Jemison

Some of the most fun people I know are scientists.

Some people say they feel very small when they think about space. I felt more expansive, very connected to the universe.

When I was growing up as a little girl and as a teenager, I loved designing and making dogs' clothes and wanting to be a fashion designer. I took art and ceramics. I loved dance.

When God made the color purple, God was just showing off.

Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations.

The biggest challenge we all face is to learn about ourselves and to understand our strengths and weaknesses. We need to utilize our strengths, but not so much that we don't work on our weaknesses.

I want to make sure that that future that we're creating is one that is the best it can be for people around the world, and also one that includes the full range of our talent and our skills - and, you know, gender and ethnicity, geography - to solving the world's problems.

My parents were comfortable with me exploring areas that they were not proficient in. Some parents just aren't comfortable with that.

Greatness can be captured in one word: lifestyle. Life is God's gift to you, style is what you make of it.

The thing that I have done throughout my life is to do the best job that I can and to be me.

When you have teachers saying, 'I don't have enough time for hands-on activities,' we need to rethink the way we do education.

A big part of engaging kids in science is not getting the single, correct answer; it's being willing to work with students to discover the correct answer.

Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, 'How come? Why? What's this?' They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it's discovering the world around us.

I went to school at night in L.A. to brush up on my engineering while I applied to the astronaut program. I really did not know if I would get in. It was the year after the Challenger accident in 1987.

The best way to get students involved in science and want to follow either science careers or incorporate it in their lives or to achieve science literacy is to expose them to the various jobs in STEM. It's broad from biologists to electricians to nanotechnologists to building fusion engines. It's a wide range of things.

I think that people need an adrenalin rush. Folks need something aspirational; they need to do something that is hard. That's what ignites the imagination.

We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.

There are individuals who can support you, but frequently, you have to risk putting yourself out there - and sometimes you just have to push.

The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.

I wanted to be a professional dancer for a period of time, and I did a lot of dancing and choreography and got paid for it.

In space, you need to exercise your heart since it's not pumping blood around at the same rate.

In fourth grade, I was interested in all areas of science. I particularly loved learning about how the earth was created.

My perspective is the Earth will be here. It just may not be habitable to our life form. We get confused. We think we're the center of everything.

I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.