“When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!”

Looking at the earth from afar you realize it is too small for conflict and just big enough for co-operation.

The Earth is blue, how wonderful. It is amazing.

The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.

Circling the earth in the orbital spaceship I marvelled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world!! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty-not destroy it

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more?

I am watching the Earth. The visibility is good. I feel well and cheerful. The machine is functioning normally.

I saw for the first time the earth’s shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. The feelings which filled me I can express with one word-joy.

I see Earth! It is so beautiful.

If all those people are getting wet to welcome me, surely the least I can do is get wet too!

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

Magicians disappear all the time, but as soon as a regular person does it, everyone is all scared. “Tom’s gone!” “Is he a magician?” “No.” “Then let’s print up some flyers!”

The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

On a traffic light green means ‘go’ and yellow means ‘yield’, but on a banana it’s just the opposite. Green means ‘hold on,’ yellow means ‘go ahead,’ and red means, ‘where the hell did you get that banana at?’

I’m not funny. What I am is brave.

There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.