Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Wernher von Braun

Quote by Wernher von Braun

“I only hope that we shall not wait to adopt the program until after our astronomers have reported a new and unsuspected asteroid moving across their fields of vision with menacing speed. At that point it will be too late!”

Quote by Wernher von Braun

Author

Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun

German rocket scientist known as the 'Father of Rocketry'. Wernher von Braun worked for Nazi Germany during World War II and continued his rocket research in the United States after the war, making significant contributions to human space exploration. more

You May Also Like

“If you are reading this, and feel discouraged by an inability to communicate to others your own feelings about the importance of an active space development effort, comfort yourself with this thought. If you want to be on the leading edge of anything, you have by definition to be a couple of standard deviations away from most people. That makes you an odd-ball. The trick is to learn to accept it, then to like it-and keep on making lots of noise for what you believe in.”

“Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey? Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.”

“Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.”

“The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder.”

“Literacy is part of everyday social practice - it mediates all aspects of everyday life. Literacy is always part of something else - we are always doing something with it. Its what we choose to do with it that is important. There are a range of contemporary literacies available to us - while print literacy was the first mass media, it is now one of the mass media.”