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"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
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"I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world."

"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."

"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."

"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."

"There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations."

"The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly."
Explore more quotes by Alan Shepard

"Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business."

"I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me."

"You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft."

"And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right."

"Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess."

"Whether you are an astronomer or a life scientist, geophysicist, or a pilot, you've got to be there because you believe you are good in your field, and you can contribute, not because you are going to get a lot of fame or whatever when you get back."

"The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that."

"I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on."

"We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college."

"The rocket had worked perfectly, and all I had to do was survive the reentry forces. You do it all, in a flight like that, in a rather short period of time, just 16 minutes as a matter of fact."
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