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"There is no one area of chemical engineering that specifically helped me in my career as an astronaut, it was more the general education in engineering. Also, it was a very difficult and rigorous course. So, it made me strong and resourceful."
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"The chance that you will become a master in something after the first attempt is neither here nor there. You don't get master's degree by attending school on the first day! Time will tell, so you got to persist!"
"And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another."
"He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. "That's the only kind of book I can trust," he said."It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short."
"The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism."
"The system that aims at educating our boys and girls in the same manner as in the circus where the trainer teaches the lion to sit on a stool, has not understood the true meaning of education itself. Instead of being like a circus where the trainer uses his stick to make animals do stunts to serve the interest of the audience, the system of education should be like an Orchestra where the conductor waves his stick to orchestrate the music already within the musicians' heart in the most beautiful manner. The teacher should be like the conductor in the orchestra, not the trainer in the circus."
Explore more quotes by Leroy Chiao
"Coming down under a parachute is quite different as well. You hit the ground pretty hard, but all the systems work very well to keep it from hurting, so it doesn't even hurt when you hit. It was a great experience to be able to do both."
"I'm Chinese-American, of course, and so it's very interesting to see China actually launch their own astronauts, becoming the third nation, following the United States and Russia, to do so."
"I think it's good to have competition. Now we have a third country that can launch astronauts, so it's good for all of us. It makes us a little bit more competitive and wanting to be the leader."
"I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get another mission."
"One of my challenges was to try to photograph the Great Wall of China. And I did actually take some photos, but it was hard to discern the wall with the naked eye."
"Of course, you'll have to meet the physical and psychological demands. A space walk takes a lot of energy."
"I would say keep supporting space flight, keep telling the public and the politicians why it's important to advance science and explore the galaxy. I encourage the Japanese to keep doing what they're doing."
"But a lot of that kind of work is done pre-flight, coordinating efforts with the flight directors and the ground teams, and figuring out how you're going to operate together."
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