That's one small step for a man, one giant leap forward for mankind.

-Armstrong, Neil A(lden)
  His words on becoming the first man to walk on the moon, 20  Jul.  Armstrong claimed to have said'That's one small step for a man†', but tape-recordings seem to confirm that he omitted the'a', thereby causing some confusion among his listeners.

A big step for me, and a small step for mankind. SeeArmstrong 30:78.

-Brodsky, Ioseph
  Response on hearing of his Nobel prize award. Quoted in his obituary in The Scotsman, 29  Jan1996.

The distance does not matter; it is only the first step that counts.

-Deffand, Marquise du
  Commenting on the legendof St Denis, said to have carried his severed head for six miles following his execution. Letter, 7  Jul.

There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.

-Doyle, SirArthur Conan
  His Last Bow,'Wisteria Lodge'.

'Dealing with a man,'said thenight-watchman,'isas easy as a teetotaller walking along a nice wide pavement; dealing with a woman is like the same teetotaller, after four or five whiskies, trying to get up a step that ain't there.'

-Jacobs,W(illiam) W(ymark)
  Deep Waters,'Husbandry'.

It isn't the first step that concerns me, but both sides escalating to the fourth or fifth stepöand we don't go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so.

-Kennedy, Robert F(rancis)
On the possibility of initiating nuclear warfare. Thirteen Days (published1969).

One Step Forward,Two Steps Back

-Lenin,Vladimir Ilyich originally Vladimir IlyichUlyanov
   Title of book.

It's a right step in the wrong direction.

-Levant, Oscar
   Attributed remark at the first performance of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. He infact had the deepest respect for Gershwin's music.

If you must go nowhere, step out.

-Lezama Lima,Jose¤
  The Childermass, final words.

In order that a new theory should constitute a discovery or step forward it should conflict with its predecessor †it should contradict its predecessor; it should overthrow it. In this sense, progress in scienceöor at least striking progressöis always revolutionary.

-Popper, Sir Karl Raimund
  The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

-Schopenhauer, Arthur
  DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

That damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirelyand helplesslyat his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  JohnTanner to AnnWhitefield. Man and Superman, act1.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know onlya few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, byany confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but reallyconcurring, laws, which Thoreau we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

-Thoreau, Henry David
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'The Pond inWinter'.

Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end.

-Whymper, Edward
Scrambles Amongst theAlps.