Words matter. These are the best Mae Jemison Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
We are all tasked to balance and optimize ourselves.
As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.
In fourth grade, I was interested in all areas of science. I particularly loved learning about how the earth was created.
I want to make sure that that future that we’re creating is one that is the best it can be for people around the world, and also one that includes the full range of our talent and our skills – and, you know, gender and ethnicity, geography – to solving the world’s problems.
The reality is that we know that this universe, that our galaxy, has billions of stars. We know that stars have planets. So the likelihood that there is life somewhere else to me is just absolutely there.
I wanted to be a scientist, but I wanted to go into space. They are not mutually exclusive.
The fact we don’t have a lunar base has nothing to do with the technology. It has to do with public commitment and societal support.
When I left NASA, I was looking at how you could use space technologies for developing countries’ work.
I believe the biggest impediment we have right now with going to Mars is public commitment. More people need to see themselves as a part of space travel; we need to see more inclusiveness.
Sometimes people ask me how difficult the astronaut program was, but being in Sierra Leone, being responsible for the health of more than 200 people, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at age 26 – that prepared me to take on a lot of different challenges.
I’m not somebody who gets teared up or anything, but I still look up at the stars, and it gives me hope, and it gives me energy. I think one of the things that we have to think about it is, we are all a part of this universe.
A big part of engaging kids in science is not getting the single, correct answer; it’s being willing to work with students to discover the correct answer.
We have to change the way people look at scientists. Today, they are the nerds, the geeks. Instead, we want some of the cool kids to say, ‘Hey, this is all right.’
You have to actually be weighted to something to do the moonwalk, you know.
My perspective is the Earth will be here. It just may not be habitable to our life form. We get confused. We think we’re the center of everything.
One Hundred Year Starship really is about the idea that is we pursue an extraordinary tomorrow; we’ll build a better world today.
For me, it was really a childhood dream coming true. It’s sort of where the fantasy led reality, and then I got to be on the Starship Enterprise anyway. And the cool thing was – is I was the only person on this bridge who had actually been in space.
Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, ‘How come? Why? What’s this?’ They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it’s discovering the world around us.
What we find is that if you have a goal that is very, very far out, and you approach it in little steps, you start to get there faster. Your mind opens up to the possibilities.
The best way to get students involved in science and want to follow either science careers or incorporate it in their lives or to achieve science literacy is to expose them to the various jobs in STEM. It’s broad from biologists to electricians to nanotechnologists to building fusion engines. It’s a wide range of things.
Sometimes parents squash students’ interests because they are afraid of science or math. So they don’t participate. You don’t have to know the answers to engage kids; you just have to let them know it’s important.
The biggest challenge we all face is to learn about ourselves and to understand our strengths and weaknesses. We need to utilize our strengths, but not so much that we don’t work on our weaknesses.
When you have teachers saying, ‘I don’t have enough time for hands-on activities,’ we need to rethink the way we do education.
The level of confidence women are able to build in women-only groups is important.
I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They’re really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.
