Aviation Quotes - Page 20

• I pay those guys to fly, so let them fly. I'll be damned if I'll pay them to just sit there.

  Eddie Rickenbacker

  Guy, Pay, Ifs

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• It occurred to me that if I did not handle the crash correctly, there would be no survivors.

  Richard Leakey

  Would Be, Survivor, Crash

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• A fierce and monkish art; a castigation of the flesh. You must cut out your imagination and not fly an airplane but regulate a half-dozen instruments . . . .At first, the conflicts between animal sense and engineering brain are irresistibly strong.

  Wolfgang Langewiesche

  Art, Strong, Airplane

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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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• I just made a balls of it, old boy. That's all there was to it.

  Douglas Bader

  Boys, Balls, Made

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• It's hard to replace the gray matter that is inherent in every human being. No computer can do it quite that well yet.

  John P. Jumper

  Gray Matter, Computer, Wells

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• I'm here to tell you that I am proud of a couple of things. First, I am very good at projectile vomiting. Second, I've never had a really serious venereal disease.

  Herb Kelleher

  Couple, Vomiting, Disease

  29 Copy quote

• Those were my children being slaughtered.

  Don Burr

  Children, My Children, Airline

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• It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline.

  Gordon Bethune

  Airline Business, Size, Making Money

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• I am not a good shot. Few of us are. To make up for this I hold my fire until I have a shot of less than 20 degrees deflection and until I'm within 300 yards. Good discipline on this score can make up for a great deal.

  John C. Meyer

  Fire, Discipline, Yards

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• Fighter pilot is an attitude. It is cockiness. It is aggressiveness. It is self-confidence. It is a streak of rebelliousness, and it is competitiveness. But there's something else - there's a spark. There's a desire to be good. To do well; in the eyes of your peers, and in your own mind.

  Robin Olds

  Attitude, Eye, Self Confidence

  Christina Olds, Ed Rasimus, Robin Olds (2010). “Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds”, p.291, Macmillan

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• I've said many times that I'd be thrilled to sell the airline to the employees and our guys said no, we'll take all the money, anyway.

  Robert Crandall

  Airline Business, Guy, Said

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• The air is annoyingly potted with a multitude of minor vertical disturbances which sicken the passengers and keep us captives of our seat belts. We sweat in the cockpit, though much of the time we fly with the side windows open. The airplanes smell of hot oil and simmering aluminum, disinfectant, feces, leather, and puke ... the stewardesses, short-tempered and reeking of vomit, come forward as often as they can for what is a breath of comparatively fresh air.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Airplane, Sweat, Oil

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• The good thing about flying solo is it's never boring.

  Steve Fossett

  Flying, Boring, Good Things

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• Go in close, and when you think you are too close, go in closer.

  Thomas McGuire

  Thinking, Pilots, Combat

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• ‎‎‎‎Short of committing murder, negative publicity sells more seats than positive publicity.

  Michael O'Leary

  Negative, Publicity, Murder

  "Ryanair's Michael O'Leary: 'Short of committing murder, bad publicity sells more seats'" by Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, www.campaignlive.co.uk. August 01, 2013.

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• Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth) I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.

  Erica Jong

  Sex, Giving Up, Air

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• Even present-day fuels possess more than enough energy, if only we knew how to release and use it. Just as molecular energy is so freely used to-day, so atomic energy may bring interplantary travel within easy reach to-morrow.

  P. E. Cleator

  Future, Energy, Use

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• Strive for simplicity. You never have to fix what you leave out.

  Bill Lear

  Simplicity, Strive

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• As to rocket ships flying between America and Europe, I believe it is worth seriously trying for. Thirty years ago persons who were developing flying were laughed at as mad, and that scorn hindered aviation. Now we heap similar ridicule upon stratoplane or rocket ships for trans-Atlantic flights.

  Auguste Piccard

  Believe, Years, Europe

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• Good flying never killed an enemy yet.

  Mick Mannock

  Flying, Enemy, Combat

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• A top World War II ace once said that fighter pilots fall into two broad categories: those who go out to kill and those who, secretly, desperately, know they are going to get killed-the hunters and the hunted.

  Nathan Farragut Twining

  War, Fall, Two

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• You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle.

  James Salter

  Oxygen, Vacuums, Steel

  James Salter (2012). “The Hunters”, p.193, Counterpoint Press

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• The more mechanical becomes the weapons with which we fight, the less mechanical must be the spirit which controls them.

  Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell

  Fighting, Weapons, Spirit

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• I mean, I had fast motor cars and fast motor bikes, and when I wasn't crashing airplanes, I was crashing motor bikes. It's all part of the game.

  Harry Broadhurst

  Airplane, Mean, Games

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