Explore Quotes by Gene Cernan

I was a child of World War Two . I saw films of pilots taking off from aircraft carriers and decided that was the only thing I wanted to do. And it had to be flying from sea carriers. Airfields were not enough.

We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.

Nobody can take those footsteps I made on the surface of the moon away from me.

I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the moon.

If the guidance failed or started to stray or went somewhere we didn't like or the ground didn't like, I could flip a switch, and I could control seven, over seven and a half million pounds of thrust with this handle and fly the thing to the Moon myself.

We don't have the capability today to put a human being in space of any kind, shape or form, which is absolutely, totally unacceptable when we got the greatest flying machine in the world sitting down at Kennedy in a garage there with nothing to do.

If you begin to think you're something you're not, you're looking in the wrong mirror.

NASA has been scattered to the four winds.

I walked on the Moon. What can't you do?

When you head on out to the Moon, in very short order, and you get a chance to look back at the Earth, that horizon slowly curves around in upon himself, and all of sudden you're looking at something that is very strange, but yet is very, very familiar, because you're beginning to see the Earth evolve.

Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. 'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'... I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions. I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out.

As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come...I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. As we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. "Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

Once I finally stepped on the moon, no matter what was to come of the next three days - or the rest of my life - nobody could take those steps from me. People ask how long will they be there, and I say forever, however long forever is, like my daughter’s initials that I scribbled in the sand [TDC for Tracy Dawn Cernan].

Curiosity is the essence of human existence.

Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing honor. It's been far too long.

Prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable . . . after 50 years of flying I'm still learning every time I fly.

The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.

I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it's not just some abstract romantic idea, it's something very real to me. See, I've expanded my home.

I've been asked about UFOs and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.

It's our destiny to explore. It's our destiny to be a space-faring nation.