I thought, well. when I step off it's just going to be a little step—a step from there down to there—but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation.

on what inspired him to say his famous words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." - 60 Minutes interview (2005)