Success Quote by Claude Nicollier

Ambition, here, isn’t framed as a blazing obsession but as a sequence: one dream, then another, then the quiet astonishment of actually getting to live them. Nicollier’s phrasing is deceptively plain, almost Swiss in its restraint, and that’s the point. “Then, much later” signals time as an ingredient as important as talent. This isn’t the Silicon Valley myth of the prodigy who always knew; it’s a portrait of aspiration that evolves with age, exposure, and opportunity. The dream changes because the world changes around you: new technologies, new national programs, new personal horizons.

The sentence’s emotional payload sits in a single word: “fortunate.” Astronauts are often cast as superhuman, but Nicollier insists on contingency. He acknowledges the ecosystem that makes spaceflight possible - institutions, teams, timing, politics, budgets - without doing the usual humblebrag. It’s a subtle rebuttal to meritocracy-as-fairytale. Yes, you work. Yes, you qualify. But “fortunate” admits how many equally capable people never get the call.

That final “also” does two things at once. It downplays heroics (as if orbit were just another checkbox) while underscoring a life pattern: dreams can be realized more than once. In the context of a European astronaut who flew with NASA, it also carries a cultural undertone of improbability - a reminder that some careers exist at the intersection of personal desire and geopolitical infrastructure. The line works because it makes awe feel lived-in, not performative.