TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index R > Sally Ride Quotes

Thumbnail of Sally Ride (source)
Sally Ride
(26 May 1951 - 23 Jul 2012)

American astronaut.


Science Quotes by Sally Ride (8 quotes)

[In junior high school] I liked math—that was my favorite subject—and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Favorite (37)  |  High (370)  |  Interest (416)  |  Junior (6)  |  Junior High (3)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Physical (518)  |  Physical Science (104)  |  School (227)  |  Subject (543)

[In space] the stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Big (55)  |  Bright (81)  |  Do (1905)  |  Look (584)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)

[Lifting off into space] I wasn’t really scared. I was very excited, and I was very anxious. When you’re getting ready to launch into space, you’re sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen. So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion—because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Anxious (4)  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Big (55)  |  Do (1905)  |  Excited (8)  |  Explosion (51)  |  First (1302)  |  Happen (282)  |  Launch (21)  |  Lift (57)  |  Lift Off (3)  |  Most (1728)  |  Ready (43)  |  Scared (2)  |  Sitting (44)  |  Something (718)  |  Space (523)  |  Wait (66)  |  Waiting (42)  |  Worry (34)  |  Wrong (246)

I didn’t really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college. But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program. I had both male and female heroes. One was a high school science teacher who was very important in encouraging me to pursue science. Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine. And the early astronauts, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, were heroes of mine as well.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Neil Armstrong (17)  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Both (496)  |  College (71)  |  Decide (50)  |  Early (196)  |  Elementary (98)  |  Elementary School (3)  |  Encourage (43)  |  Encouraging (12)  |  End (603)  |  Female (50)  |  John Glenn, Jr. (33)  |  Hero (45)  |  High (370)  |  Important (229)  |  Interest (416)  |  Junior (6)  |  Junior High (3)  |  Male (26)  |  Mine (78)  |  Program (57)  |  Pursue (63)  |  School (227)  |  Space (523)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Tennis (8)  |  Want (504)

I think that the two things that almost any astronaut would describe [as most fun about being in space] are the weightlessness and the view of Earth. Weightlessness is just a lot of fun!
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Being (1276)  |  Describe (132)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Fun (42)  |  Lot (151)  |  Most (1728)  |  Space (523)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Weightlessness (2)

I think there probably is life, maybe primitive life, in outer space. There might be very primitive life in our solar system—single-cell animals, that sort of thing. We may know the answer to that in five or ten years. There is very likely to be life in other solar systems, in planets around other stars. But we won’t know about that for a long time.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Answer (389)  |  Know (1538)  |  Know The Answer (9)  |  Life (1870)  |  Long (778)  |  Other (2233)  |  Planet (402)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Single (365)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Space (523)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  System (545)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Year (963)

I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis. So I decided on science when I was in college.
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Career (86)  |  College (71)  |  Decide (50)  |  Interest (416)  |  Long (778)  |  Tennis (8)  |  Term (357)

There are now several women astronauts who have a test pilot background, and that was not true for a long time. For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds. So it would’ve been impossible to have an all-women crew because there weren’t women pilots. But now it would be very possible!
— Sally Ride
Interview conducted on Scholastic website (20 Nov 1998).
Science quotes on:  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Background (44)  |  Crew (10)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Long (778)  |  NASA (12)  |  Possible (560)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Test (221)  |  Time (1911)  |  Woman (160)



Quotes by others about Sally Ride (1)

When I was … a teenager … like, 14, … the space program was getting started, and I wanted to be an astronaut. I wrote to NASA and I said, “What do I have to do to be prepared to be an astronaut?” And they wrote back and said, “Thank you very much but we’re not taking girls.” … That thankfully changed with Sally Ride and a lot of the other great women astronauts.
At Town Hall Meeting, Dover, New Hampshire (16 Jul 2015). As quoted in Clare Foran, 'Hillary Clinton: I Wanted to Be an Astronaut', National Journal (16 Jul 2015).
Science quotes on:  |  Astronaut (34)  |  Back (395)  |  Change (639)  |  Do (1905)  |  Girl (38)  |  Great (1610)  |  Lot (151)  |  NASA (12)  |  Other (2233)  |  Prepare (44)  |  Ride (23)  |  Space (523)  |  Space Program (9)  |  Start (237)  |  Teenager (6)  |  Thank (48)  |  Thank You (8)  |  Want (504)  |  Wanted (4)  |  Woman (160)


See also:
  • 26 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Ride's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.