Top 60 Armstrong Quotes

When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the Internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon – and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio. The future felt limitless. But today, our government is broken.

I’m no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn.

Everything being equal, no sickness or crashes, there’s nobody who can beat Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

I was in the Oval Office when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon because I was called in to coordinate the coverage. I got to thinking, ‘We have a feed from the moon. We’ve got a feed from the Earth. I can set up the first interplanetary shot in history.’

I was watching a black and white television in Cairo, MI., at my grandparents’ house, and I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon. At that point, it set the bit for me to be an astronaut, and it was kind of like a dream, but it really wasn’t reality.

Everyone should take their hats off to Neil Armstrong. He is a humble guy who doesn’t wave his own flag.

Lance Armstrong is the guy that I would put up there as one of my heroes. He’s done something that no one else has done and when you put into it what he overcame, it’s absolutely unbelievable.

Growing up in San Diego, my main interests were the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, ‘Star Wars,’ baseball cards, and drawing.

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

It’s fair to say that white America wouldn’t have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music – from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop – and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as ‘serious.’

I’m not on a mission. I’m not a paragon of health for anybody. I’m not going to run a marathon or model for ‘Men’s Health’ or go on bike rides with Lance Armstrong. I’m not. Trust me.

It hadn’t really percolated through my brain that I was going to see real, live TV from the surface of the Moon, and boy, oh, boy, had that Saturn V launch been exciting! And then, there it was – late at night, sitting up, watching, and there was Neil Armstrong actually standing on the surface of the Moon.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day always says we were influences on him, because he does melodic but distorted, like what we were doing. The Ramones were doing it. We were doing it. The Buzzcocks, all those bands.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

I suppose I am Scottish – Armstrong. They were thugs, basically, reivers – and I bet they were ravers, too. They lived in what was known as the Debatable Lands, so it didn’t have any allegiance to either the English or the Scottish crown.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.

For years, I longed to hear Armstrong describe what it was like to contemplate Earth from 238,900 miles away. Former Space Center director George Abbey once told me that many NASA astronauts felt that looking at Earth was akin to a religious experience.

I feel very privileged to have worked with a lot of outstanding actors: Alun Armstrong, Peter Mullan, Matt Smith and Andrew Garfield.

There’s a steady forward march of a creative process that some of us stay with and don’t give up – that should be an admirable thing – from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Miles to Ornette and some people who are not even known today – some kids coming up – people who are out to change the world.

I agree it is the most important, but cycling is not only about Tour. If everybody thinks like Armstrong, there will be only one race.

What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys.

Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ are the ultimate one-two punch.

I didn’t grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it’s not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

NewSpace companies are staffed by young, new leaders who worship the giants who got us here, such as the recently passed Neil Armstrong, and are eager to work with NASA to do great things together – but we have to both give them a chance and get out of the way.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

The ’60s were a remarkable time because several things were happening at once. Men were leaving planet Earth, kids were breaking into the television age, and I was able to see Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

Fitness is a curve. You can be Lance Armstrong, or you can be really out of shape at the opposite end. People enter the curve wherever they are and then they can move up the curve, by better nutrition and better exercise.

The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that’s still there – it’s preserved.

New Yorkers know how to borrow wildly. You know, Louis Armstrong was not a New York musician. He went from New Orleans to Chicago to New York, and when he arrived here, he taught those New Yorkers. New York needs that infusion.

That period afterwards, just hating being the winner of the Tour de France, hating cycling, hating the media for asking me questions about Lance Armstrong.

I was living in New York. Sometimes, our gang of musicians would go to Louis Armstrong’s home and play records. It was a lesson, like going to school at night. Ella Fitzgerald was an inspiration, too, a unique artist. When you had an opportunity to be with people like them, you cherished it.

I was treated with a miracle drug, just like Lance Armstrong.

I didn’t even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.

We’re working on New Glenn, which is our orbital vehicle, but we have in our mind’s eye an even bigger vehicle called New Armstrong.

I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.

To Armstrong, constantly speaking about ‘Apollo 11’ only diminished the magic. That’s why he worked overtime to avoid notice, living a quiet life in Indian Hill, Ohio.

I remember; I was 15 years old when Neil Armstrong put feet in the moon.

The soles of Neil Armstrong’s boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent’s sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong.

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that’s what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

You’ve got different people that have different views of New Orleans. When you say ‘New Orleans,’ you have people who just think of the Neville Brothers. You’ve got people that think of Louis Armstrong. You say ‘New Orleans,’ and you’ve got people that think of Lil’ Wayne.

I was a more aggressive rider than Armstrong. I would attack more often. He waits for the other guys, then counter-attacks.

Neither Neil Armstrong nor Michael Collins had a mental breakdown after returning from the moon.

Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn’t enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn’t listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn’t influenced by European music!

I write about what hoaxers do, but I also want us to think about what believers do. Why do we want to believe a story like James Frey’s ‘A Million Little Pieces?’ Why did we want to believe that Lance Armstrong really did all these things that, looking back, seemed impossible?