Michael Collins (astronaut) Quotes (1930-2021)

“Each spring and summer, as the lake gets drier and as more high-pressure aircraft tires abuse it, surface cracks and blemishes appear, so by late autumn the lake bed appears rough and "ruined". Then come the winter rains, sparingly, but providing enough water to allow a couple of inches to accumulate on the lake bed and to be blown back and forth by the omnipresent wind. By early spring, the newly dried surface reappears, as silky as a baby's bottom, ready to take another year's traffic smoothly and safely.”

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. I am not a naïve man. I don’t believe that a glance from 100,000 miles would cause a Prime Minister to scurry back to his parliament with a disarmament plan, but I do think it would plant a seed that ultimately could grow into such concrete action.”