Top 15 Most Famous Jim Lovell Quotes to Inspire You
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.
— Jim Lovell
From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.
— Jim Lovell
Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.
— Jim Lovell
The moon is essentially gray, no color. It looks like plaster of Paris, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.
— Jim Lovell
We do not realize what we have on Earth until we leave it.
— Jim Lovell
The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.
— Jim Lovell
You arrive on a planet [Earth] that has the proper mass, has the gravity to contain water, and an atmosphere, which are the very essentials for life. And you arrive on this planet [Moon] that’s orbiting a star just at the right distance — not too far to be too cold, or too close to be too hot — and just at the right distance to absorb that star’s energy and then, with that energy, cause life to evolve here [Earth] in the first place.
— Jim Lovell
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
— Jim Lovell
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.’
— Jim Lovell
Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes. I was very much an airplane boy.
— Jim Lovell
You have to remember we brought back a picture of the Earth as it is 240,000 miles away. And the fact is, it gives you a different perspective of the Earth when you see it as three-dimensional between the sun and the moon, and you begin to realize how small and how significant the body is.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
The fascination to go into space has existed for hundreds of years. But as we do things and they’re successful, people get bored.
— Jim Lovell
You need to be a person who makes things happen.
— Jim Lovell
When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed… Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo – and just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live and work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.
— Jim Lovell
More Best Astronaut Jim Lovell Quotes
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.
— Jim Lovell
Houston, we’ve had a problem.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— 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.
— Jim Lovell
We didn’t slow down, unlike the others, when we got to the moon because we needed its gravity to get back, so we hold the altitude record. I never even thought about it. Records are only made to be broken.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
The moon is essentially gray, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish beach sand.
— Jim Lovell
I was a naval officer and aviator. I tested airplanes and got selected to be an astronaut later on.
— Jim Lovell
I was born a year after Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren’t that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.
— Jim Lovell
I take the NASA physical every year.
— Jim Lovell
After six successful Apollo flights, including two lunar landings, people were getting bored.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
In space-flight terms, six landings on the moon back in the Sixties and Seventies doesn’t mean much.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
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.
— Jim Lovell
