Jim Lovell Moon Quotations

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 youve 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.

I didnt 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.

The Moon is essentially gray - no color - looks like plaster of paris - soft of gray sand.

It looks to me, looking out the hatch, that we are venting something. We are venting something into the-into the space.

Well, Frank, my thoughts are very similar. The vast loneliness up here at the moon is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize what you have back there on earth. The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself-all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.

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.