Wernher von Braun — "I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution."
I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.
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More from Wernher von Braun
"The Moon is a harsh mistress."
"We are on the threshold of a new era of space exploration."
"I’m convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the Moon."
"One cannot be timid when one works with liquid oxygen."
"Don’t tell me that man doesn’t belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Declaring something impossible is almost always premature. Human understanding and capability constantly expand, so what seems beyond reach today often becomes routine tomorrow. Caution around the word 'impossible' reflects intellectual humility and openness to breakthroughs — an acknowledgment that limits are usually temporary constraints of current knowledge, not permanent boundaries of reality.
Relevance to Wernher von Braun
Von Braun spent his career turning the 'impossible' into engineering reality. He helped develop the V-2, the first operational ballistic missile, then led NASA's Saturn V program that landed humans on the Moon in 1969. Colleagues repeatedly told him his ambitions exceeded physics or politics. Each time, persistence proved the skeptics wrong, making this personal maxim autobiographical.
The era
Von Braun worked through the 1940s–1970s, when rocketry transformed from science fiction into geopolitical reality. The Space Race between the US and USSR made previously unimaginable feats — orbital flight, lunar landing — happen within decades. This era shattered conventional limits so rapidly that caution around 'impossible' became the rational scientific posture, not optimism.
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