Outer Space…

“What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.”

— Norman Cousins, Cosmic Search magazine, volume 1, number 1, January 1979.

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Oddly enough the overriding sensation I got looking at the earth was, my god that little thing is so fragile out there. — Mike Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut

 The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space. —  Aleksei Leonov

No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life -fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Earth Shine, 1969.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.  — John Muir, Travels in Alaska, 1915.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.  — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

All quotes from: http://www.spacequotations.com/earth.html

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