Gagarin Quotes

Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

Through Jimi Hendrix's music you can almost see the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Junior, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin in space, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the debut of Spiderman, Martin Luther King Junior's 'I Have a Dream' speech, Ford Mustang cars, anti-Vietnam protests, Mary Quant designing the mini-skirt, Indira Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister of India, four black students sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, President Johnson pushing the Civil Rights Act, flower children growing their hair long and practicing free love, USA-funded IRA blowing up innocent civilians on the streets and in the pubs of Great Britain, Napalm bombs being dropped on the lush and carpeted fields of Vietnam, a youth-driven cultural revolution in Swinging London, police using tear gas and billy-clubs to break up protests in Chicago, Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton Beach, Native Americans given the right to vote in their own country, the United Kingdom abolishing the death penalty, and the charismatic Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. It's all in Jimi's absurd and delirious guitar riffs. ~ Karl Wiggins

Until the Tower of Babel, humans had only planted and sown, reaped and harvested. Farmers are dependent upon nature and, in their dependency, turn to God. Builders, however, seek to control nature. And in their sense of might they tend to overplay their own role and at times to believe that they are no longer dependent on God. "Come let us build a city and a tower with its top in Heaven" (Genesis 11:4). The Talmud adds (Sanhedrin 109a): "We will build a tower that reaches so high that we will be able to come to the very throne of the Almighty and topple him." The metaphor is profound. The scientist says if we build high enough, if we indicate our ultimate strength, if we reach the skies and soar to the very Heavens, then we, too, with Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut, can say with unbounded egoism, "There is no God, because I was in the Heavens and I did not see Him." "Let us make us a name" was the cry of the first technological wizards. "We will dethrone God." And so they built the Tower of Babel. ~ Benjamin Blech

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
[Speaking about, in 1961, becoming the first human to enter space.] ~ Yuri Gagarin

Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid ... Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development. ~ Yuri Gagarin

Looking at the earth from afar you realize it is too small for conflict and just big enough for co-operation. ~ Yuri Gagarin

If all those people are getting wet to welcome me, surely the least I can do is get wet too! ~ Yuri Gagarin

This is the band Radical Posture, and my name is Alexei Yuri Gagarin Siege of Stalingrad Glorious Five-Year Plan Sputnik Pravda Moscow Dynamo Back Four Balowski. Me Dad was a bit of a Communist, know what I mean? ~ Alexei Sayle

The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin. ~ Yuri Gagarin

What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth ... . The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots ... . When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black. ~ Yuri Gagarin

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more do you want?" We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that. ~ Carl Sagan

There weren't any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday. ~ John L. Phillips

British astronomer royal Richard Woolley, who in 1956 said, "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really."10 Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the earth just five years later. ~ Massimo Pigliucci

I don't see any god up here first man in space, while in space. ~ Yuri Gagarin

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more? ~ Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin had a much more reliable and safe ship than I do. And Soviet ships were death traps. ~ Andy Weir

When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow! ~ Yuri Gagarin

There were protocols to meet for the historic occasion. On the lunar dust they placed mementoes for the five-deceased American and Soviet spacemen, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin (who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque's words, his voice carried throughout the world. "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind." There was yet another small cargo - private and precious - carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the three Apollo 1 astronauts and presented to him by their widows after that dreadful fire. ~ Alan Shepard

Going to Mars is a bunch of baby steps, and it started off with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin. ~ Scott Kelly

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip. ~ Alexei Sayle

Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epoch flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable. ~ Burt Rutan

Circling the earth in the orbital spaceship I marvelled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world!! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty-not destroy it ~ Yuri Gagarin

The joy of seeing Yuri Gagarin flying in space is only superseded by the joy of a good penalty save. ~ Lev Yashin

I could have gone on flying through space forever. ~ Yuri Gagarin

Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd. ~ Burt Rutan