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When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!

— Yuri Gagarin

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Recalling his meeting with workers in a field, upon his landing, as quoted in "Life on Mars?" by Jesse Skinner in Toro magazine (14 October 2008)
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Yuri Gagarin

I am a friend, comrades, a friend!

I would like to dedicate this first space flight to the people of communism, a society which our Soviet people are already entering, and which, I am confident, all men on earth will enter.

I have to disillusion them. I am a simple Soviet man.

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Topics

Space

More quotes by Yuri Gagarin

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!

The main force in man — is the power of the spirit.

Essays on Marxist-Leninist Ethics [марксистско-ленинской этике (1962)

Let's go! (Russian: Поéхали, Poyekhali!)

If all those people are getting wet to welcome me, surely the least I can do is get wet too!

I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

Earth's Aura (1977)

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Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
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Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.

Arthur Koestler The Act of Creation (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Yuri Gagarin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.