Chris Hadfield quotes

Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, engineer, and former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot. He gained worldwide fame as the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, sharing his space experiences through social media and music. He has inspired millions with his educational outreach and engaging communication about space exploration. Here are 13 of his quotes:

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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

Chris Hadfield

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.'

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield