Chris Hadfield quotes:

My father was an airline pilot, so we travelled more spontaneously than a lot of families. On a Thursday, we could decide to go somewhere like Barbados the next day for a long weekend.

The communities and countries best at using energy to optimize a microclimate for human life are also the ones whose people have the longest average lifespans. Canada, Sweden, and Iceland - places with inhospitable winter weather - are frontrunners in sustaining human health and life.

The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

Russians aren't perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians.

I was born in Sarnia, Ontario; a small town, it's where oil was pretty much discovered in North America.

Our three big emergencies are fire, loss of pressurization or contaminated atmosphere. Any of those things in a spaceship are very deadly and time critical. Everybody's trained, but I'm the commander of the ship, and it's up to me to decide.

The best simulator for spacewalking is underwater - it allows full visuals and body movement in 3D. Virtual reality is good, too, and has some advantages, like full Station simulation, not just part. Like all simulators, they have parts that are wrong and misleading: an important thing to remember when preparing for reality.

Some of the greatest reality television we ever had was the moon landings. When you think about it, that was human emotion and people, unscripted, working with each other - and millions and millions of people around the world, glued to their television sets to share real-time in a brand new, fascinating human experience.

One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land.

While on the space station, I kept up with news a couple of ways - Mission Control sent daily summaries, and I would scan headlines on Google News when we had an Internet connection, which was about half the time.

I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's.

The Soyuz craft weighs tons, and you're lying on the floor of it on your back. But the Russians do tell you, remember, before you land, stop talking so you don't bite your tongue off.

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

In the astronaut business - the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle; it's the most complicated flying machine ever built. And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is, 'There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.'

It is spectacular. From about five minutes in, when we knew for sure that we were going to have the weather to go, the smile on my face just got bigger and bigger, and I was just beaming through the whole launch. I mean, it is just an amazing ride.

Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.

The beauty of the space station, and of human spaceflight, is that it is now at a level of maturity where you can invite people on-board, which is what I worked so hard to do on social media and all the videos I made.

And then finally, I'm the commander, so I am fundamentally responsible for the lives of the other people on board and the health and longevity of the space station. I need to bring six people back happy, healthy and feeling like they've had the best six months of their life.

If you don't like airline food, you'll probably have the same impression of space station food. I would not fly to space for the food.

You could look at something a hundred times from space, but the next time you come around the world, suddenly it's very different and gorgeous-looking, just because of the change of weather or the angle of the sun.

I think there are lots of ways to exercise ambition and accomplish things using leadership without going into elected politics. So, categorically, I have no intention of going into elected politics. None.

As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.

Airline food is cooked in an oven and then kept warm. Space station food is often cooked in an oven and then thermo-stabilised, irradiated or dehydrated and then stored for a year or two before you even get to it.

I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.

Although simulators are great for building step-by-step knowledge of a procedure, the worst thing that can happen in a sim is that you get a bad grade on your performance.

There are no wishy-washy astronauts. You don't get up there by being uncaring and blase. And whatever gave you the sense of tenacity and purpose to get that far in life is absolutely reaffirmed and deepened by the experience itself.

You can get claustrophobia and agoraphobia - a fear of wide, open spaces - simultaneously on a spacewalk.

To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over.

Think about what happens on Earth when you throw up. You throw up and you have a bag of something horrible and then you throw it away, but if I have this bag, what am I going to do with it? This bag is going to stay with me in space for months, so we want a really good barf bag.

When you look out the window of a spaceship, you see entire countries, vast swaths of continents. One turn of the head covers what once took thousands of years to traverse at ground level.

Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it's starting a new business, whether it's leaving home, whether it's getting married, or whether it's flying in space.

We have never lost a crew member on the space station, but of course, the Columbia accident. I was - I'd already been an astronaut for a decade when the crew of Columbia was killed. And I went through test pilot school. Rick Husband and I were out at Edwards at test pilot school together. He was the commander of Columbia.

It's a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It's much riskier than staying indoors. It's complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.

Our training pushes us to develop a new set of instincts: instead of reacting to danger with a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, we're trained to respond unemotionally by immediately prioritizing threats and methodically seeking to defuse them. We go from wanting to bolt for the exit to wanting to engage and understand what's going wrong, then fix it.

Fatherhood is the unending imperfect task of turning yourself into your dad while secretly maintaining the unbridled elation of your boyhood

To me, it's simple: if you've got the time, use it to get ready. What else could you possibly have to do that's more important? Yes, maybe you'll learn how to do a few things you'll never wind up actually needing to do, but that's a much better problem to have than needing to do something and having no clue where to start.

It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it.

Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.

Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.

So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.

When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it's one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.

I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.

Square astronaut, round hole. But somehow, I'd managed to push myself through it, and here was the truly amazing part: along the way, I'd become a good fit. It had only taken 21 years.

It was remarkable to see from space how predictable people are. Our homes and towns are almost all in places with moderate temperatures, and they generally have the same shape - a thinly occupied outer blob of suburb surrounding a densely populated core, all based around a ready source of water.

Every single thing that you learn really just gives you more comfort. It's something I counsel kids all the time: if someone is willing to teach you something for free, take them up on it. Do it. Every single time. All it does is make you more likely to be able to succeed. And it's kind of a nice way to go through life.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it's also so disappointing and self-defeating.

The rough and ready improvisational quality to life on board the International Space Station is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew's time is spent just on maintaining and repairing the craft.

Just taking risks for risk's sake, that doesn't do it for me. I'm willing to take risks that I think are worth it, and I've worked so hard to make sure that I survive.

Sweat the small stuff. Without letting anyone see you sweat.

Spaceflight isn't just about doing experiments, it's about an extension of human culture.

People tend to think astronauts have the courage of a superhero - or maybe the emotional range of a robot. But in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge. Sure, you might still feel a little nervous or stressed or hyper-alert. But what you won't feel is terrified.

I watched the first people walk on the moon, and to me, it was just an obvious thing - I want to somehow turn myself into that. But the real question is, how do you deal with the danger of it and the fear that comes from it? How do you deal with fear versus danger?

No aeroplane you've ever gotten into had less than thousands of flights before they took their first passenger. Because vehicles are unsafe at first.

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

I don't want to be treated like I came from another planet or something or was somehow born with some weird birthright or super power. I don't view myself that way. I am a normal guy, picking up the crap from the dog and scraping the BBQ and having a beer and fixing the shed out back.

Ever since I was nine years old and I watched Neil and Buzz walk on the moon, I have felt passionately that this is an interesting human adventure. This is one of the things we're doing that is really fundamentally important, as we leave our home planet, but also exciting.

When you're on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it's hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all.

There's always constantly interesting things to do, and who knows, maybe I will be a good sculptor. I haven't decided what I am going to do next, but I am not going to quit just because I did something interesting.

Space is not a good place to mix foods because as soon as you take something out of the package, it becomes a flying object.

For whatever reason, I decided: 'I'm 18, I'm a man, I'm going to grow a moustache' - and it was pathetic for years - it was awful.

A lot of people live in fear because they haven't figured out how you're going to react when faced with a certain set of circumstances. I've come to terms with this by looking deeply into whatever makes me fearful - what are the key elements that get the hairs up on the back of my neck - and then figuring out what I can do about it.

To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I couldn't see in either eye - that, I think, would cause some people to lose control.

I've raised three kids: my wife and I have three kids. I've observed through direct contact the adults they are now is partially the product of where they came from and what we did. With them growing up, but partially how they were wired at birth.

When we first get to space, we feel sick. Your body is really confused. You're dizzy. Your lunch is floating around in your belly because you're floating. What you see doesn't match what you feel, and you want to throw up.

The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.

Boldface' is a pilot term, a magic word to describe the procedures that could, in a crisis, save your life. We say that 'boldface is written in blood' because often it's created in response to an accident investigation. It highlights the series of steps that should have been taken to avoid a fatal crash, but weren't.

I've been so lucky to have done two spacewalks. If you looked at your wristwatch, I was outside about 15 hours, which is about 10 times around the world. And, you know, there's a whole time dilation, distortion thing.

I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit.

Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow, and the day after that. Look at who you want to be, and start sculpting yourself into that person. You may not get exactly where you thought you'd be, but you will be doing things that suit you in a profession you believe in. Don't let life randomly kick you into the adult you don't want to become.

As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.

Most budget airlines anywhere in the world are going to leave you dissatisfied after using them.

Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk...

The emotional build-up and anticipation if you travel at Christmas can make it harder to enjoy a trip. I think sometimes it is better to travel outside of conventional holiday times for that reason.

Don`t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don`t want to become

My favourite city for nightlife is Toronto, as it has such a multicultural feel, with so many different restaurants and theatres.

Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction

Every single day you're the result of what you did on the days prior.

Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive.

Imbibe three or four times as much water as you think you need and skip at least one, if not two meals, when you are travelling. You should arrive at your destination feeling slightly hungry and your digestive system reset.

Remember, nobody changes the world on their own.

By looking at the difference between perceived danger and actual danger, you can fundamentally change your reaction.

Do your homework in advance about the actual travel details so transportation issues do not define your holiday.

No one ever accomplished anything great sitting down.

In any field, it's a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.

Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. Applause, then, never bore much relation to the reality of my life as an astronaut, which was not all about, or even mostly about, flying around in space.

My favourite city is Moscow, because of its history, which I find fascinating. As I learned to speak Russian, it made it even more interesting.

My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.

The cool things about space is when you put your pants on here, you can put them on two legs at a time.

Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow and the day after that.

Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can't view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It's got to be an end in itself.

There is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse

Doing a space walk. It is one of the most rare human experiences. To leave your spaceship and go outside, so that you are alone in the universe with Earth distant and the universe around you. That is amazing.

If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.

Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.

I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What's the glove design? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can't just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.

There is a sunrise or a sunset from space every 92 minutes so there is an incredible amount of beauty to see from up there.

The Bahamas are gorgeous. The deep trench in the ocean floor called the Tongue of the Ocean, which comes between the islands, is the most beautiful deep indigo colour.

It's not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed. Some people feel this is like shooting themselves in the foot - why aid someone else in creating a competitive advantage? I don't look at it that way. Helping someone else look good doesn't make me look worse. In fact, it often improves my own performance, particularly in stressful situations.

Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.

To me, it's not about being anywhere, but being able to change my perceptions and experience something new.

Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.

Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term.

From space, the Bahamas is the most beautiful place on Earth.

Preparation is not only about managing external risks, but about limiting the likelihood that you'll unwittingly add to them. When you're the author of your own fate, you don't want to write a tragedy. Aside from anything else, the possibility of a sequel is nonexistent.

Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.

Loneliness... has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world... because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more... connected to the seven billion other people...

In any new situation, whether it involves an elevator or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn't tip the balance one way or the other. Or you'll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform.

There's really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.

The Nile, draining out into the Mediterranean. The bright lights of Cairo announce the opening of the north-flowing riverâ??s delta, with Jerusalemâ??s answering high beams to the northeast. This 4,258 mile braid of human life, first navigated end-to-end in 2004, is visible in a single glance from space.

I've been lucky enough to fly to space twice.

The danger is different from the fear. ... [practice] what to do if things go wrong, as well as right.

I wasnâ??t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.

We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people.

You can't change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well-and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.

When you have some skills but don't fully understand your environment, there is no way you can be a plus one. At best, you can be a zero. But a zero isn't a bad thing to be. You're competent enough not to create problems or make more work for everyone else. And you have to be competent, and prove to others that you are, before you can be extraordinary. There are no short-cuts, unfortunately.