Yuri Gagarin

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended.

Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty - not destroy it!

When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear.

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!

The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.

Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of any one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

Looking at the earth from a far you realize it is too small for conflict and just big enough for co-operation.

Everything was easier to perform… legs and arms weighed nothing.

My handwriting did not change, though the hand was weightless. But it was necessary to hold the writing-block as otherwise it would float away from the hands…

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more?

When you are in the air never doubt your equipment and don't make hasty decisions.

I became infected with a new disease, a disease the medicine has not yet found a name for—the irresistible urge to reach outer space. It was a vague, not fully recognized feeling, but it remained with me, bothered me and gave me no rest.

I felt wonderful when the gravity pull began to disappear. I suddenly found I could do things much more easily than before. And it seemed as though my hands and legs and my whole body did not belong to me. They did not weigh anything. You neither sit nor lie, but just keep floating in the cabin. All the loose objects likewise float in the air and you watch them as in a dream.