Happy Space Exploration Day!

Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.
Carl Sagan

Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.
Neil deGrasse Tyson

Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.
Carl Sagan

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.
Bill Nye

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
Stanisław Lem

Space exploration is important research to our economic and national defense, and America's space program is a symbol of our success as a scientifically and technologically advanced nation.
Randy Forbes

A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?
Carl Sagan

Russia is still the leader in world space exploration. But its position of leader involves great responsibility - we have no right to lag behind. We can and we must move constantly forward.
Valentina Tereshkova

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!
Larry Niven

I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.
Leroy Chiao

Space exploration and experimentation are critically valuable to our nation. I know of no better way to honor those seven who sacrificed their lives than to recommit ourselves to defend and enhance America's important strategies in space.
Rob Bishop

The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.
Warren Ellis

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.
Naveen Jain

Rocket ships are exciting but so are roses on a birthday.
Leonard Nimoy

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.
Buzz Aldrin

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.
John F. Kennedy

Looking down the road, space exploration and the benefits it yields - in medicine and information technology - should not be overlooked.
Bob Barr

NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.
Will Chabot

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.
Eugene Cernan

If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason - and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers.
Carl Sagan

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
Elon Musk

The sky is the limit only for those who aren't afraid to fly!
Bob Bello

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.
James Lovelock

If you want a nation to have space exploration ambitions, you've got to send humans.
Neil deGrasse Tyson

The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency.
Neil deGrasse Tyson

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.
Buzz Aldrin

I think space exploration is very important. I think there is very intelligent life on Mars. I believe that Martians are spying on us from the bottom of the ocean.
Annabella Sciorra

Everyone, red state, blue state, everyone supports space exploration.
Bill Nye

To most people in the U.K., indeed throughout Western Europe, space exploration is primarily perceived as 'what NASA does'. This perception is - in many respects - a valid one. Superpower rivalry during the Cold War ramped up U.S. and Soviet space efforts to a scale that Western Europe had no motive to match.
Martin Rees

Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
Neil Armstrong