Chris Hadfield
Fatherhood is the unending imperfect task of turning yourself into your dad while secretly maintaining the unbridled elation of your boyhoodCollection: Dad
It's not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed. Some people feel this is like shooting themselves in the foot - why aid someone else in creating a competitive advantage? I don't look at it that way. Helping someone else look good doesn't make me look worse. In fact, it often improves my own performance, particularly in stressful situations.Collection: Helping Others
The Moon has given us months, tides and a destination that ever-beckons. It's time we build a rocket and go to stay.Collection: Epic
Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. Applause, then, never bore much relation to the reality of my life as an astronaut, which was not all about, or even mostly about, flying around in space.Collection: Loss
Loneliness... has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world... because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more... connected to the seven billion other people.Collection: Loneliness
To me, it's not about being anywhere, but being able to change my perceptions and experience something new.Collection: Perception
I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.Collection: Inspirational
Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term.Collection: Fun
Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.Collection: Frustration
There is a sunrise or a sunset from space every 92 minutes so there is an incredible amount of beauty to see from up there.Collection: Sunset
The danger is different from the fear. ... [practice] what to do if things go wrong, as well as right.Collection: Practice
You can't just ignore spacewalking suit; it partially defines the experience. So maybe the most difficult thing is becoming completely attuned to efficiently wearing a garment that is so inhibiting to motion, and making it look effortless, as if it's the most natural thing to be out there on a spacewalk.Collection: Natural
"What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts.Collection: Pilots
Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.Collection: Teacher
It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it.Collection: Work
The emotional build-up and anticipation if you travel at Christmas can make it harder to enjoy a trip. I think sometimes it is better to travel outside of conventional holiday times for that reason.Collection: Holiday
Scientific literacy is one of the underpinnings of everything I do. It's why I work with schools. It's why I teach at university. I do a lot of outreach to try and improve general scientific literacy, but the core of all scientific literacy is just literacy.Collection: School
You can't change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.Collection: Wall
It's like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they're born.Collection: Baby
People tend to think astronauts have the courage of a superhero - or maybe the emotional range of a robot. But in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge. Sure, you might still feel a little nervous or stressed or hyper-alert. But what you won't feel is terrified.Collection: Courage
It's good to have a fear of heights. I mean, it's kind of crazy not to because if you just lean out a little bit and there's a gust of wind or somebody bumps you or something and you fall, you're splat.Collection: Crazy
The Nile, draining out into the Mediterranean. The bright lights of Cairo announce the opening of the north-flowing river’s delta, with Jerusalem’s answering high beams to the northeast. This 4,258 mile braid of human life, first navigated end-to-end in 2004, is visible in a single glance from space.Collection: Light
I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What's the glove design? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can't just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.Collection: Space
Preparation is not only about managing external risks, but about limiting the likelihood that you'll unwittingly add to them. When you're the author of your own fate, you don't want to write a tragedy. Aside from anything else, the possibility of a sequel is nonexistent.Collection: Writing
Doing a space walk. It is one of the most rare human experiences. To leave your spaceship and go outside, so that you are alone in the universe with Earth distant and the universe around you. That is amazing.Collection: Space
I'm not a wealthy person and I don't think that I would be able to prioritize that much money to go for a ride to a place that I have already lived. But if the price comes down or I win a lottery or something, why not?Collection: Thinking
When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it's one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.Collection: Giving
One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well-and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.Collection: Space
My favourite city for nightlife is Toronto, as it has such a multicultural feel, with so many different restaurants and theatres.Collection: Nightlife
Our training pushes us to develop a new set of instincts: instead of reacting to danger with a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, we're trained to respond unemotionally by immediately prioritizing threats and methodically seeking to defuse them. We go from wanting to bolt for the exit to wanting to engage and understand what's going wrong, then fix it.Collection: Fighting
Most budget airlines anywhere in the world are going to leave you dissatisfied after using them.Collection: World
In all of the movie portrayals, a spacewalking suit seems sort of insignificant, like a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. No one thinks much about it. But it's a spaceship, not a spacesuit, an entire life-support mechanism that's incredibly complex and cumbersome. It's very difficult to put on and off. You have to run it the whole time you are wearing it, and it redefines how you move. It's like if you put on a wetsuit and a snowmobile suit and froze yourself solid and then tried to go and do work.Collection: Running
If you haven't learned to ride a bike by the time your peer group has, then suddenly it's an embarrassment and you'll avoid opportunities where you're expected to ride a bike. And then it starts shaping your behaviour. Reading is much subtler, but much more destructive if you have not - for whatever reason - learned to read by the time you should.Collection: Reading
From space, the Bahamas is the most beautiful place on Earth.Collection: Beautiful
The Bahamas are gorgeous. The deep trench in the ocean floor called the Tongue of the Ocean, which comes between the islands, is the most beautiful deep indigo colour.Collection: Beautiful
Imbibe three or four times as much water as you think you need and skip at least one, if not two meals, when you are travelling. You should arrive at your destination feeling slightly hungry and your digestive system reset.Collection: Thinking
Do your homework in advance about the actual travel details so transportation issues do not define your holiday.Collection: Holiday