Sally Ride Quotes

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Sally Ride

Profession : Astronaut

Birth : May 26, 1951

The view of Earth is spectacular.

Sally Ride

I think it's important for little girls growing up, and young women, to have one in every walk of life. So from that point of view, I'm proud to be a role model!

Sally Ride

For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.

Sally Ride

The women's movement had already paved the way, I think, for my coming.

Sally Ride

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.

Sally Ride

It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission.

Sally Ride

For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys. A lot of my friends did.

Sally Ride

I did not come to NASA to make history.

Sally Ride

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

Sally Ride

The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.

Sally Ride

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.

Sally Ride

When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

Sally Ride

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

Sally Ride

But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.

Sally Ride

The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the space program.

Sally Ride

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

Sally Ride

I've spent my whole life not talking to people, and I don't see why I should start now.

Sally Ride

The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.

Sally Ride

My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.

Sally Ride

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

Sally Ride