Frank Borman

"Long before the moon mission, I had told NASA that Apollo 8 would be my last flight. It was a decision reached after a long talk with Susan, although the decision was strictly mine."

"Borman had a Tolstoy quotation on a wall in his office: "The only legitimate happiness is honest hard work and the surmounting of obstacles."

"Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts. And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace."

"A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill."

"God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good." And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth."

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."

"When youre finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and youre going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell cant we learn to live together like decent people."

"The Earth was the only thing in the world — in the universe — that had any color. Everything else was black and white but the earth was beautiful blue and white and brownish continents. That was the most impressive sight for me of the entire flight."

"This must be what God sees. I was absolutely awestruck, not so much at what we had accomplished but at what made the accomplishment possible. A machine produced by more than three hundred thousand Americans was circling the moon with three human beings aboard for the first time in history."

"There was one more impression we wanted to transmit: our feeling of closeness to the Creator of all things. This was Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968, and I handed Jim and Bill their lines from the Holy Scriptures."