10 Quotes on the Overview Effect

“The experience is incredible, you have all this motion and colours and light that really gives you the sense that we live on a living, breathing organism and the experience is undeniable yet surreal, it remains very much part of who I am today”

Ronald Garan

“I’ve known every cosmonaut and every astronaut…without exception, every one of them cannot get over the beauty of seeing planet Earth. It just takes your breath away and [pause] you just cannot take your eyes off the Earth. It just is so beautiful”

Joseph Allen

“It surprises you every time you look out, even if you are looking at the same place that you flew over before. This kind of very dynamic, ever-changing appearance of the place that gives it the appearance that it’s alive”

Nicole Stott

“I was really almost immediately struck with a sobering contradiction between the beauty of our planet on one hand and the unfortunate realities of life on our planet, for a significant portion of its inhabitants on the other hand”

Ronald Garan

“It gives me comfort to know Earth is our home, how it takes care of us and I recognise that, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the years talking to people and trying to get them to understand how important it is that we take an attitude toward our Earth as a more reverent attitude and do more to take care of it”

Gerald Carr

“A...faceplate is all that separates our eyes from the void...I cannot imagine any other experience that could approach this one. Curiously, I found that when outside I was much more moved by nature and less drawn to particular places. The perspective is so much greater that zooming in on a city seems uninteresting”

Michael Lopez-Algeria

“The most amazing part of it was...seeing our planet from space. And I said seeing, but experience our planet from space because to me it was much more than just a visual experience, it was a feeling of detachment...from the only home that I've ever known...it impacted me emotionally in a big way”

Ronald Garan

“I felt like it became this idea of real significance too, feeling that we were where we were and people are where they are on that planet for a reason. That even though it is this tiny little speck in the grand scheme of the Universe, it doesn’t equate to insignificance. It is not an insignificant thing that our planet is where it’s at and does what it does for us...I think it’s a very significant thing”

Nicole Stott

“Earth becomes a source of comfort too not just because it is beautiful, or harbours life but because somehow you feel part of something bigger and that fills me with hope”

Joseph Allen

“It’s constantly changing, the colours, the shadows, the terrain, everything is changing and all this motion, colours and light really gives you the sense that we live on a living, breathing organism...When you’re up there for months at a time you can actually see the ice breaking up in the harbour, you can see this line that represents the changing leaf colours slowly march from south to north, to north to south, And those long term seasonal changes, when you put them together with the routine day to day changes, again give you this impression that we all live on a living, breathing organism, this living thing that we call Earth, a living biosphere”

Ronald Garan

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