Ron Garan > Quotes

“Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“A partner's different perspective is valuable, but the very fact that it is different means that it will require work, humility, time, and resources to incorporate that perspective. At times, this will require checking one's pride at the door.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“If we adopt the same collaborative mindset and practices that got to the moon and back, and that built the International Space Station, we can alleviate poverty—and do much more.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Ideally, the ISS program will just be one more incremental step on an expanding, incredible journal of exploration and understanding, taking us higher and farther.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Weightlessness was wonderful, and I was surprised at how natural it felt.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“People are more likely to remember the great social interaction they had with a colleague than the great meeting they both attended.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Everyone I have spoken with about working with the Russians in space exploration believes that the United States has learned a great deal from Russia and that Russia has learned a great deal from the United States – and that the entire international space partnership is much better because of it.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“You can't solve problems until you understand the other side." –Jeffrey Manber”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“After mutual respect and understanding are achieved, it is possible to establish real, sincere relationships, which is the foundation of a solid long-term collaboration.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Love is a powerful perspective-expanding tool that can unite us in ways that seem impossible. By opening up to love, the possibilities become endless.”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“I’m not willing to deceive myself for false comfort, and I’m not willing to don the false mask of external indifference.”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“This was exactly what I experienced in space: immense gratitude for the opportunity to see Earth from this vantage, and for the gift of the planet we've been given.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Open collaboration encourages greater accountability, which in turn fosters trust.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“All of us in combat were inextricably dependent on each other for our very lives. We were not only fighting for our country, we were fighting for each other.
• I know that part of what I was fighting for was the freedom we all cherish so dearly, including freedom of speech, but this is different. Having the right to free speech does not mean you have a right to your own facts or your own truth. Having free speech is not a free pass to spew hatred or to abandon civil discourse.
• The commitment and sacrifice of military members extends beyond combat. The sacrifices are real and exist twenty-four/seven regardless if we are in peacetime or war.
• In some way, we are like Plato’s prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn our heads. We only see shadows on the cave wall. We are oblivious to the larger, more colorful and more desirable world outside of the cave.
• I think where religion may go astray is when leaders and followers of a specific religious doctrine or tradition mistake the vehicle of religion for truth itself.”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“At this point I thought 'We made it,' by which I meant 'We survived.' I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“The ISS would not be the incredibly capable orbiting research facility it is today without either Russians or Americans, just as it couldn't have been built without the Canadian arm used in its construction.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“I remember the awe and terror I felt as my awareness started to transition from the magical world of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to one of the Big Bang, supernovas, and the apparent finality of death.
• Why is it that to function in society with strength and efficiency, we need to ignore the incomprehensible miracles that surround us constantly? Why is it that to function in the world, we must take on an oblivious self-confidence by placing ourselves in a tiny world, a small and limited subset of reality? Why is it that we abandon awe and limit ourselves to the prison that is right in front of our noses, guided primarily by our animal instincts while ignoring our full perception of the world? We have the capability to project our conscious thought backward or forward billions of years yet act as if all that matters is the past and/or immediate future. ”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“We essentially had to build a docking mechanism between the two capsules. We didn't have to share a lot of data, and we did that at the height of the Cold War, which was pretty symbolic." –Bill Gerstenmaier”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles

“Humanity had just become a different species—a species no longer confined to our planet.”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“I gaze out upon this vast gulf, astounded by the incredible level of interdependence that exists below that sparkling blue surface. I spent much time on the mission mesmerized by the linked and seemingly altruistic behavior of schools of fish. Their behavior, I believe, reflects a complex network of interacting components. The collective actions of the individual fish within the school appear to be linked by a dense web of intricate connectivity.
• No one fish could do what the entire school can. It seemed almost as if the school itself had some form of networked consciousness capable of forming complex patterns, as if there was some sort of evolutionary non-zero-sum algorithm that was playing out in their collective action, as if each individual fish sensed somehow that it was part of something larger and more important, a community with a common purpose: to survive.”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“As the complexity of the material universe reaches critical mass, a primordial certainty echoes throughout creation in a loud, simultaneous proclamation: We are one!”
― Ron Garan, Floating in Darkness - A Journey of Evolution

“I lay on my back, surprised at how calm and focused I felt, strapped to four and a half million pounds of explosives.”
― Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles