Top 120 Chris Hadfield Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse.”

— Chris Hadfield

2. “Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow and the day after that.”

— Chris Hadfield

3. “Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive.”

— Chris Hadfield

4. “Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.”

— Chris Hadfield

5. “Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction.”

— Chris Hadfield

6. “No one ever accomplished anything great sitting down.”

— Chris Hadfield

7. “Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying in space.”

— Chris Hadfield

8. “Every single day you’re the result of what you did on the days prior.”

— Chris Hadfield

9. “Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.”

— Chris Hadfield

10. “Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.”

— Chris Hadfield

11. “I wasn’t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.”

— Chris Hadfield

12. “Square astronaut, round hole. But somehow, I’d managed to push myself through it, and here was the truly amazing part: along the way, I’d become a good fit. It had only taken 21 years.”

— Chris Hadfield

13. “In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts.”

— Chris Hadfield

14. “It’s not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed.”

— Chris Hadfield

15. “Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.”

— Chris Hadfield

16. “We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people.”

— Chris Hadfield

17. “Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.”

— Chris Hadfield

18. “If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.”

— Chris Hadfield

19. “Remember, nobody changes the world on their own.”

— Chris Hadfield

20. “In any field, it’s a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.”

— Chris Hadfield

21. “There’s really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.”

— Chris Hadfield

22. “Preparation is not only about managing external risks, but about limiting the likelihood that you’ll unwittingly add to them. When you’re the author of your own fate, you don’t want to write a tragedy. Aside from anything else, the possibility of a sequel is nonexistent.”

— Chris Hadfield

23. “There’s nothing more important than what you’re doing right now.”

— Chris Hadfield

24. “Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can’t view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It’s got to be an end in itself.”

— Chris Hadfield

25. “Sweat the small stuff. Without letting anyone see you sweat.”

— Chris Hadfield

26. “Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk...”

— Chris Hadfield

27. “When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it’s one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.”

— Chris Hadfield

28. “Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”

— Chris Hadfield

29. “Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.”

— Chris Hadfield

30. “Early success is a terrible teacher.”

— Chris Hadfield

31. “It’s good to have a fear of heights. I mean, it’s kind of crazy not to because if you just lean out a little bit and there’s a gust of wind or somebody bumps you or something and you fall, you’re splat.”

— Chris Hadfield

32. “You can’t change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.”

— Chris Hadfield

33. “By looking at the difference between perceived danger and actual danger, you can fundamentally change your reaction.”

— Chris Hadfield

34. “See, a funny thing happened on the way to space: I learned how to live better and more happily here on Earth. Over time, I learned how to anticipate problems in order to prevent them, and how to respond effectively in critical situations. I learned how to neutralize fear, how to stay focused and how to succeed.”

— Chris Hadfield

35. “Astronauts are taught that the best way to reduce stress is to sweat the small stuff. We’re trained to look on the dark side and to imagine the worst things that could possibly happen. In fact, in simulators, one of the most common questions we learn to ask ourselves is, “Okay, what’s the next thing that will kill me?”

— Chris Hadfield

36. “I’m really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.”

— Chris Hadfield

37. “I’ve been lucky enough to fly to space twice.”

— Chris Hadfield

38. “It’s like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they’re born.”

— Chris Hadfield

39. “Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It’s a state of mind. In the center of every big, bustling city are some of the loneliest people in the world.”

— Chris Hadfield

40. “The cool things about space is when you put your pants on here, you can put them on two legs at a time.”

— Chris Hadfield

41. “So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.”

— Chris Hadfield

42. “I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.”

— Chris Hadfield

43. “It’s never either-or, never enjoyment versus advancement, so long as you conceive of advancement in terms of learning rather than climbing to the next rung of the professional ladder. You are getting ahead if you learn, even if you wind up staying on the same rung.”

— Chris Hadfield

44. “It’s almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we’re highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn’t for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it.”

— Chris Hadfield

45. “I’ve had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.”

— Chris Hadfield

46. “Over the years I’ve learned that investing in other people’s success doesn’t just make them more likely to enjoy working with me. It also improves my own chances of survival and success.”

— Chris Hadfield

47. “The whole process of becoming an astronaut helped me understand that what really matters is not the value someone else assigns to a task but how I personally feel while performing it.”

— Chris Hadfield

48. “Like most astronauts, I’m pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I’ve thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That’s the power of negative thinking.”

— Chris Hadfield

49. “Floating past the Soyuz TV screen, I noticed we were over the Pacific, off the Chilean coast. At the window, I saw few lights: fishing boats, I thought. Then they resolved themselves: the Southern Cross. I was looking at a constellation in the night sky, not the sea! It was a strange delight to be that disconcerted while simultaneously at ease.”

— Chris Hadfield

50. “Working the problem” is NASA-speak for descending one decision tree after another, methodically looking for a solution until you run out of oxygen.”

— Chris Hadfield