Quotes from Buzz Aldrin

I know the sky is not the limit, because there are footprints on the Moon -- and I made some of them!

From the distance of the moon, Earth was four times the size of a full moon seen from Earth. It was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky.

My Mother's maiden name was Marion MOON! I guess it was destiny.

Returning to Earth, that was the challenging part.

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.

Magnificent desolation.

Did you know I took the first space selfie during Gemini 12 mission in 1966? BEST SELFIE EVER

History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.

America must dream again, and have the faith to achieve the dream.

When our crew was announced, I told my wife that I'd just as soon be on a later flight because I didn't want all the press and all the attention for the rest of my life for being on the first landing. Because that's all the press seems to care about. "Who was first? Who was on the first landing?" Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon.

In my mind, public space travel will precede efforts toward exploration -- be it returning to the moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, or whatever seems appropriate. We've got millions and millions of people who want to go into space, who are willing to pay. When you figure in the payload potential of customers, everything changes.

When you're part of the pioneering effort, there's a focusing of an individual's concentration and level of attention that is at the exclusion of a lot of other things. It's kind of gun-barrel vision.

It's not the value of the rocks we brought back, or the great poetic statements that will be uttered. Those things aren't remembered. It's that people witnessed that event. We are not going to justify going to Mars by what we bring back.

Once you've been first, it cannot be done again. Not by you, not by anyone else.

Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline.

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family. Her father committed suicide. She committed suicide the year before I went to the moon.

The first time I applied to be an astronaut, NASA turned me down. I was not a test pilot, they said, and at that time, NASA wanted only test pilots. Other people, no matter how bright or talented, need not apply. Sure, I was disappointed, but I was determined and I knew the sky was not the limit, so I applied again.

We were probably not as lighthearted as Clooney and Sandra Bullock. We didn't tell too many jokes when people were in some position of jeopardy outside the spacecraft, but I think that's the humanity coming through in the characters. This movie gave great clarity to looking down and seeing the features of Earth ... but there weren't enough clouds, and maybe there was too precise a delineation from space.

Let me say, as I sit here before you today, having walked on the moon, that I am myself still awed by that miracle. That awe, in me and in each of us ... must be the engine of future achievement, not a slow-dimming light from a time once bright.

I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?

What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.

When I returned from the Moon, I fell into a series of depressions and bouts with alcohol because I had great difficulty finding something meaningful to do. After you have done what no human beings have done in all of history ... it is hard to get excited about a "normal" job or a mundane military career. So for a while, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions, and it wasn't until I returned to what I was passionate about -- space exploration -- that I truly found my equilibrium again.

I was exhilarated, but also guarded. We were on show. There was nobody around for hundreds of thousands of miles. But there was a camera and a radio and many millions of people watching. We were aware of that, and that causes you to focus your attention and make sure you aren't making mistakes. You're on stage, but it's a very unusual stage.

We have the ability, at such high fidelity, to simulate the physical world through computers. But when the spiritual world or human behavior comes into play, we don't have a very good model for that at all.