The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.
Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.
You have the right to be involved. You have something important to contribute, and you have to take the risk to contribute it.
The future never just happened. It was created.
Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe. I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet.
Greatness can be captured in one word: lifestyle. Life is God’s gift to you, style is what you make of it.
Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.
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.
What we find is that if you have a goal that is very, very far out, and you approach it in little steps, you start to get there faster. Your mind opens up to the possibilities.
The thing that I have done throughout my life is to do the best job that I can and to be me.
When God made the color purple, God was just showing off.
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.
I always knew I’d go to space.
Some of the most fun people I know are scientists.
My parents were comfortable with me exploring areas that they were not proficient in. Some parents just aren’t comfortable with that.
Science provides an understanding of a universal experience, and arts provides a universal understanding of a personal experience.
As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.
I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They’re really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.