"Now that we've lost Alan Shepard, I can't help feeling that something is wrong with this picture; astronauts aren't supposed to grow old and leave this Earth forever. In our memories, they remain as Shepard was on that sunny Friday morning in May 1961, when he lay inside a tiny Mercury capsule ready to be hurled into space atop a Redstone booster."

“I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books.”

“With the passing of Alan Shepard, our nation has lost an outstanding patriot, one of its finest pilots -and I have lost a very close friend.”

“Alan Shepard was a great man, a great leader. We were pioneers. If you are an explorer, what more can you ask than to travel into space.”

“There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back.”

“The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station.”

“The first one I hit pretty flush with one hand - went about 200 yards. And the second one I shanked, and it rolled into a crater about 40 yards away.”