Quotes from Jim Lovell

People say, 'Did you violate Heaven?' Well, God is down here, too. If you believe in God, you believe in God here as well as 240,000 miles away.

The fascination to go into space has existed for hundreds of years. But as we do things and they're successful, people get bored.

I would suspect strongly that over a period of time, if we put our mind to going to Mars, it will be a consortium of several countries.

Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes. I was very much an airplane boy.

If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn't a miracle, we just decided to go.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

I could put my thumb up to a window and completely hide the Earth. I thought, 'Everything I've ever known is behind my thumb.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen ... those who watch things happen ... and those who wonder what happened.

I didn't go into the NASA program to pick up rocks or to go the moon or anything else. I went in there because I was a military officer, and that was the next notch in my profession.

I was a naval officer and aviator. I tested airplanes and got selected to be an astronaut later on.

After six successful Apollo flights, including two lunar landings, people were getting bored.

I could put my thumb up to a window and completely hide the Earth. I thought, 'Everything I've ever known is behind my thumb.'

The lunar flights give you a correct perception of our existence. You look back at Earth from the moon, and you can put your thumb up to the window and hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything you've ever known is behind your thumb, and that blue-and-white ball is orbiting a rather normal star, tucked away on the outer edge of a galaxy.

For most of the time carrier aviation is more challenging than flying in a spacecraft

We do not realize what we have on Earth until we leave it.

My view is that we should go back to the moon, build up the infrastructure to make flights there commonplace - be comfortable with it - then use that infrastructure to expand and go to Mars.

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It's too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope.

In space-flight terms, six landings on the moon back in the Sixties and Seventies doesn't mean much.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

I was born a year after Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic.

For some time, I thought Apollo 13 was a failure. I was disappointed I didn't get to land on the moon. But actually, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

Houston, we've had a problem.