Top 7 Mike Massimino Quotes
Viewing our planet was so compelling. Words like beautiful and awesome just don’t do it justice. I felt that I was looking at a paradise. I was looking at heaven. I can’t imagine any place being more beautiful than our planet and how lucky we are to be able to live here.
— Mike Massimino
Because being the right person isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being able to handle whatever life throws at you.
— Mike Massimino
You only have one life. You have to spend it doing something that matters.
— Mike Massimino
If you can learn to live with indignities in life, you can go far.
— Mike Massimino
That’s how a team works. You help the people around you, and everybody’s better off for it.
— Mike Massimino
I think most astronauts are not risk takers. We take calculated risks for something that we think is worthwhile.
— Mike Massimino
We were on the same team, where you want everyone around you to be as successful as possible because in some way or another their success will become your success. It’s good karma – what goes around comes around.
— Mike Massimino
19 Inspirational Mike Massimino Quotes About Life, Passion, and Space Travel
And my thought looking down at the Earth was Wow. How much God our Father must love us that he gave us this home. He didn’t put us on Mars or Venus with nothing but rocks and frozen waste. He gave us paradise and said, “Live here.” It’s not easy to wrap your head around the origins and purpose of the universe, but that’s the best way I can describe the feelings I had.
— Mike Massimino
I applied to be an astronaut four times. I was rejected three times before I was accepted. So, it’s about… following your dream and not giving up.
— Mike Massimino
You can learn a lot by getting knocked down, and I got knocked down over and over again. And every time I got up and kept going.
— Mike Massimino
Life is funny. I’d applied to the wrong graduate program, but that eventually led me to the right grad program.
— Mike Massimino
I realized wherever you are, if you make the most of what you’ve got, you can find a way to keep moving forward.
— Mike Massimino
Life is not about achieving one great thing, because once that thing is over, life keeps going.
— Mike Massimino
The camaraderie that firefighters have, that brotherhood that forms among them – my father was a part of that, and it came from having a shared sense of purpose. He told me that whatever you do in life, it can’t just be about making money. It’s important that you work to make the world a better place, that you help improve the lives of the people around you.
— Mike Massimino
The important thing is having a passion, something you love doing, and the greatest joy in the world is that you get to wake up every day and do it.
— Mike Massimino
I know there were students in my class who were smarter than me, but I don’t know if there was anybody who worked harder than me.
— Mike Massimino
I think the astronaut job is the best job in the world. I realized when I was older and started applying for it that it’s a pretty cool job.
— Mike Massimino
To become an astronaut is not a question of being the best at something or things coming easy to you, but it’s being a person that can work with others and not give up.
— Mike Massimino
I knew right then that I wanted to be a part of something that meaningful. I wanted to have something I was so passionate about that I’d be willing to risk everything for it.
— Mike Massimino
I wanted to know that if I ever got killed, I got killed doing something worthwhile.
— Mike Massimino
I remember standing in my front yard and staring up at the moon for the longest time, thinking, Wow, there are people up there, walking around. To a six-year-old kid in the suburbs on Long Island, it was the most awe-inspiring thing in the world. Something about it grabbed me down deep in my soul.
— Mike Massimino
The important thing in life is having a passion, something you really love doing, and you take joy in the fact that you get to wake up every day and do it.
— Mike Massimino
If you work hard and get help from good friends, together you can overcome almost any challenge, no matter how great.
— Mike Massimino
Going to space doesn’t make you an astronaut. Being an astronaut means you’re ready to go to space.
— Mike Massimino
It’s important to go seek help when you need it, and to give help when other people need it.
— Mike Massimino
If you propose something, you’d better be ready to run it.
— Mike Massimino
More Spaceman Mike Massimino Quotes
I had always been interested in the space program, and I didn’t know if I could be an astronaut like I’d dreamt about when I was a little kid – to me it sounded kind of silly, someone grow up to be an astronaut – but, when I was in my 20s, I thought maybe I can get a job with NASA or a contractor, do something with the space program.
— Mike Massimino
The Earth – from our altitude at Hubble, we’re 350 miles up. We can see the curvature. We can see the roundness of our home, our home planet. And it’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like looking into Heaven. It’s paradise.
— Mike Massimino
My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.
— Mike Massimino
I saw this movie ‘The Right Stuff’ when I was in college, and it really rekindled my interest in being an astronaut. I started taking those steps, and then I realized it would be the chance of a lifetime. It would be a dream life: not just a job, but the whole life.
— Mike Massimino
Being outside during the space walk, the view of the Earth is just spectacular, and getting a chance to do that is just unbelievable, everything about it. You are going around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, so you have 45 minutes of sunlight followed by 45 minutes of darkness. You do a lap every 90 minutes.
— Mike Massimino
Astronauts cannot pick their nicknames and can only get their nicknames from other astronauts. Any astronaut who tries to give himself a cool nickname will regret it by getting just the opposite from his astronaut friends.
— Mike Massimino
In New York, the Mets are winning the World Series in 1969; that was pretty big, but I would say the moon landing was right up there with the Mets in the World Series. So it made a, a big impression on me as a little kid.
— Mike Massimino
For me, the Earth had always been a kind of a safe haven, you know, where I could go to work or be in my home or take my kids to school. But I realized it really wasn’t that. It really is its own spaceship. And I had always been a space traveler.
— Mike Massimino
The reason we have the stars twinkle at night is because the light is being kind of blurred by the atmosphere around the Earth. That is why the Hubble Space Telescope is so good, because it is above the atmosphere. So it is kind of like looking at the sun from the bottom of a swimming pool, versus looking at the sun above the swimming pool.
— Mike Massimino
The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it’s very beautiful, but it’s like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver.
— Mike Massimino