Beyond Quotes

“trial in Germany raised questions about his knowledge of the Dora concentration camp inmates used to assemble his V-2 missiles in horrific conditions. In 1976 a proposal to award him a Presidential Medal of Freedom was rejected because of his Nazi background. ‘He has given valuable service to”
― Stephen Walker, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space

“An unorganized crowd! And Krushchev did it because instinctively he grasped the overwhelming emotional power of this moment for his people. He grasped that for a nation that had lost some twenty-seven million of its citizens just sixteen years earlier in the Second World War, many of whose cities had been devastated, much of whose industry had been obliterated, Gagarin's space flight meant everything. It gave hope and colour to people's lives, purpose to their sacrifices, pride in their nationhood and their political creed. For a nation so brimming with insecurities in its relationship with the west, and especially with America - insecurities that Khrushchev understood only too well- it gave a massive, euphoric injection of confidence.”
― Stephen Walker, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space

“Gagarin had just flown around the world. Now he needed a horse and cart. To those familiar with only slightly later TV footage of NASA spacecraft returning to earth [...] Gagarin's return is in a league of its own, an exercise of the surreal with a uniquely Russian twist.”
― Stephen Walker, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space

“The time was 08.27. Up on his platform Ivanovsky patted the Vostok one last time for luck. "We loved our Vostok," he wrote later. "We loved it with that love that comes with an inevitable parting." Then he descended to the ground.”
― Stephen Walker, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space