Words said when Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon (20 July 1969) One Small Step, transcript of Apollo 11 Moon landing https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11.step.html. In the actual sound recordings he apparently fails to say "a" before "man" and says: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This was generally considered by many to simply be an error of omission on his part. Armstrong long insisted he did say "a man" but that it was inaudible. Prior to new evidence supporting his claim, he stated a preference for the "a" to appear in parentheses when the quote is written. The debate continues on the matter, as "Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon" at BBC News (3 June 2009) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8081817.stm reports that more recent analysis by linguist John Olsson and author Chris Riley with higher quality recordings indicates that he did not say "a". <br class="br">Variant: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Newton Lee American computer scientist
Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
“Great leaps forward in history are often, in fact, giant leaps back.”
Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger
The Reactionary Temptation (2017)
Context: Great leaps forward in history are often, in fact, giant leaps back. The Reformation did initiate brutal sectarian warfare. The French Revolution did degenerate into barbarous tyranny. Communist utopias — allegedly the wave of an Elysian future — turned into murderous nightmares. Modern neoliberalism has, for its part, created a global capitalist machine that is seemingly beyond anyone’s control, fast destroying the planet’s climate, wiping out vast tracts of life on Earth while consigning millions of Americans to economic stagnation and cultural despair.
And at an even deeper level, the more we discover about human evolution, the more illusory certain ideas of progress become.
“XML is a giant step in no direction at all.”
Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer
Re: Q: parsing strings http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/3343483b90c8eb4c (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
“The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.”
Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet
"Adventures of Isabel" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/adventures-of-isabel/
