Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.

The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.

Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.

Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.

Progress requires setbacks; the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try.

My one concern is that when money gets tight, it's easy to cut R&D funding that isn't tied to a specific project - look at what's happened to NASA's aviation research.

In 1960-61, a small group of female pilots went through many of the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts and scored very well on them - in fact, better than some of the astronauts did.

Is manned space exploration important? Yes - not least because it simply works much better than sending robots.

Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap.

The Orion capsule uses an escape system quite like that of the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and 70s: an 'escape tower' containing a solid-fuel rocket that will pull it up and away from Ares I in a pinch.

Whether solid rockets are more or less likely to fail than liquid-fuel rockets is debatable. More serious, though, is that when they do fail, it's usually violent and spectacular.

Sometimes people wonder why aeroplanes are so cheap and rockets are so expensive. Even the most superficial comparison shows one obvious difference: aeroplane engines use outside air to burn their fuel, while rockets have to carry their own oxidisers along.

Reusable rockets promise much easier testing because you should usually get them back, and you can debug as you go rather than having to get everything perfect the first time.

Too often we just look at these glistening successes. Behind them in many, many cases is failure along the way, and that doesn't get put into the Wikipedia story or the bio. Yet those failures teach you every bit as much as the successes.

Love is such a powerful subject matter because it comes in so many different shapes and sizes. It's about timing, fate, failure, redemption.

If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

I deserve respect for the things I did not do.

The future will be better tomorrow.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

It's a very good historical book about history.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

I do have a political agenda. It's to have as few regulations as possible.

You do the policy, I'll do the politics.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

I spend a great deal of time with the President. We have a very close, personal, loyal relationship. I'm not, as they say, a potted plant in these meetings.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.

The other day the President said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy?

Bobby Knight told me this: 'There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.' In other words a good offense wins.

I already had high blood pressure. I have hypertension. And I think the chemo was just too much for my kidneys. And they went into failure. And that was September 12th of 2008. And the doctor rushed me right to the hospital.

My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure.

I'm just really, really thankful. I'm thankful to the doctors; I'm thankful to the family that donated the kidney.

God surrounded me with people of faith, people of strong faith, people of power, spiritual power, and I saw little miracles happen in their lives. By it happening in their lives, I started believing it could happen to me.

I was madly in love with Elvis Presley. Dad wasn't into it at all, at least not for himself as a performer. He used to say, 'Mr. Cole does not rock n' roll.'

At the end of the day I have always seen the end of my relationships as a personal failure. There is nothing ever pretty in saying goodbye.

I'm living life as best I can - but I'm not exempt from failure and making bad choices.

I am constantly working out-circuit training, jumping rope, and stair-stepping, and sticking to 1200 calories a day. It can't be something that you're doing to lose weight, and then once you do, you're done. I do it every day of my life.

People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

In the past, modeling influences were largely confined to the styles of behavior and social practices in one's immediate community. The advent of television vastly expanded the range of models to which members of society are exposed day in and day out.

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do.

People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective and more successful than those who lack faith in their ability to effect changes in their lives.

Tenacity is not about avoiding being overwhelmed but being indomitable in the face of the overwhelming odds of your venture's failure.