Pilots Quotes - Page 3

• A pilot who says he has never been frightened in an airplane is, I'm afraid, lying.

  Louise Thaden

  Lying, Airplane, Aviation

  Louise Thaden (1973). “High, Wide and Frightened”, p.15, University of Arkansas Press

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• There's a lot of Hollywood bullshit about flying. I mean, look at the movies about test pilots or fighter pilots who face imminent death. The controls are jammed or something really important has fallen off the plane, and these guys are talking like magpies; their lives are flashing past their eyes, and they're flailing around in the cockpit. It just doesn't happen. You don't have time to talk. You're too damn busy trying to get out of the problem you're in to talk or ricochet around the cockpit. Or think about what happened the night after your senior prom.

  Robin Olds

  Senior, Eye, Mean

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• No one can realize how substantial the air is, until he feels its supporting power beneath him. It inspires confidence at once.

  Otto Lilienthal

  Air, Flying, Inspire

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• And he supposed it might not be the best of days. But then, he was flying the mails and was not expected to squat on the ground like a frightened canary every time there was a cloud in the sky. If a pilot showed an obvious preference for flying only in the best conditions he soon found himself looking for work. This was the way of his life and he had always ascended when others had found excuse to keep their feet on the ground.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Clouds, Sky, Feet

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• The happily married man with a large family is the test pilot for me.

  Nevil Shute

  Men, Tests, Aviation

  Nevil Shute (1954). “Slide rule: the autobiography of an engineer”

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• The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

  Franz Liszt

  Tasks, Disappear, Function

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• Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.

  Beryl Markham

  Character, Yield, Hands

  McDougal, Beryl Markham (1997). “West with the Night”, McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin

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• This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to.

  Harry Reasoner

  Airplane, Ironic, Different

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• In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young.

  Mary Garden

  Skills, Australia, Flying

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• Many pilots of the time were the opinion that a fighter pilot in a closed cockpit was an impossible thing, because you should smell the enemy. You could smell them because of the oil they were burning.

  Adolf Galland

  Impossible Things, Oil, Smell

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• There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever. When these latter unfortunates, because of one urge or another, actually make an ascension, they neither anticipate nor relish the event and they drive their machines with the same graceless labor they inflict upon the family vehicle.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Views, Bird, Forever

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• I did pilots here and there but mostly I was doing little bits in movies.

  Donal Logue

  Here And There, Littles, Bits

  Interview with Daniel Robert Epstein, www.suicidegirls.com. March 1, 2006.

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• I can feel how an audience is reacting when I'm on a stage, but when you are on stage, your perception is distorted. That's something you just have to know. It's like pilots that fly at high Gs and they lose, sometimes, consciousness and hand/eye coordination and they just have to know that that's going to happen. They have to be trained to not try to do too much while they are doing that. So when you are on stage, you have to be aware that you are wrong about how it feels a lot of times.

  Louis C. K.

  Eye, Hands, Perception

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• The true exceptional performer is on super pilot. Every single sense, every fiber of his body is brought together in what he is doing.

  John Eliot

  Together, Body, Fiber

  John Eliot (2006). “Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More”, Portfolio (Hardcover)

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• Any girl who has flown at all grows used to the prejudice of most men pilots who will trot out any number of reasons why women can't possibly be good pilots. . . . The only way to show the disbelievers, the snickering hangar pilots, is to show them.

  Cornelia Fort

  Girl, Women, Numbers

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• The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

  Mark Russell

  Inspirational, Hilarious, Funny Life

  "Frequent Flyer Humor and One-Upmanship". Book by George W. Stewart, Dog Ear Publishing, p. 12, 2011.

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• No one blames a pilot who takes refuge in port when the storm begins to blow. It is not cowardice to duck under a bullet; what is wrong is to defy it only to fall and never rise again.

  Jose Rizal

  Fall, Blow, Ducks

  Jose Rizal (2010). “Noli Me Tangere: Translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero”, p.278, BookBaby

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• Why does every plane have two pilots? Really, you only need one pilot. Let's take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it.

  Michael O'Leary

  Two, Doe, Needs

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• The philosopher is Nature's pilot.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Philosopher

  George Bernard Shaw (2012). “Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy”, p.203, The Floating Press

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• Emotions are the fuel and the mind is the pilot which together propel the ship of civilized progress.

  Jim Rohn

  Mind, Together, Progress

  Jim Rohn (2013). “7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness: Power Ideas from America's Foremost Business Philosopher”, p.150, Harmony

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• If black boxes survive air crashes - why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

  George Carlin

  Funny, Travel, Airplane

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• If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.

  Bob Hoover

  Flying, Aviation, Flight

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• The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.

  Bill Gates

  Travel, Brother, Writing

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• The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile. Everybody, all of us down there, not only in Israel, have to keep it clean and good.

  Ilan Ramon

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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• I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.

  Bessie Coleman

  Women, School, Flying

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