Sally Ride

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those…

— Sally Ride

My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not…

— Sally Ride

For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never…

— Sally Ride

Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short…

— Sally Ride

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

— Sally Ride

You can picture pretty easily if there were a paying passenger aboard a rocket that failed, like Challenger failed. Certainly it would…

— Sally Ride

I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear…

— Sally Ride

We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see…

— Sally Ride

Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.

— Sally Ride

Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds - compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost…

— Sally Ride

For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

— Sally Ride

I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

— Sally Ride

The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and…

— Sally Ride

I think it's important for little girls growing up, and young women, to have one in every walk of life. So from…

— Sally Ride

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

— Sally Ride

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

— Sally Ride

Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together…

— Sally Ride

I can't remember a single time [my parents] ever told me not to do something I wanted to do.

— Sally Ride

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary.

— Sally Ride

I think maybe it's too bad that our society isn't further along and this is such a big deal. I think it's…

— Sally Ride

“When you’re getting ready to launch into space, you’re sitting on a big explosion just waiting to happen.”

— Sally Ride

If it wasn't for the women's movement, I wouldn't be where I am today.

— Sally Ride

I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps.

— Sally Ride

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.

— Sally Ride

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming…

— Sally Ride