Aviation Quotes - Page 39

• Hitler built a fortress around Europe, but he forgot to put a roof on it.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Europe, Air Power, Fortresses

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• Are you aware it is private property? Why you'll be asking be to bomb Essen next.

  Kingsley Wood

  Asking, Bombs, Air Power

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• These bright roofs, these steep towers, these jewel-lakes, these skeins of railroad line - all spoke to her and she answered. She was glad they were there. She belonged to them and they to her.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Lakes, Jewels, Railroads

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• I don't understand these people anymore, that travel the commuter-trains to their dormitory towns. These people that call themselves human, but, by a pressure they do not feel, are forced to do their work like ants. With what do they fill their time when they are free of work on their silly little Sundays? I am very fortunate in my profession. I feel like a farmer, with the airstrips as my fields. Those that have once tasted this kind of fare will not forget it ever. Not so, my friends?

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Silly, Sunday, People

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• It is not a question of living dangerously. That formula is too arrogant, too presumptuous. I don't care much for bull-fighters. It's not the danger I love. I know what I love. It is life itself.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Arrogant, Bulls, Care

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• Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me.

  Rick Perry

  Four, Pilots, Chemistry

  "Matthews Delights in 'Ripping Scab' Off 'Ignorant,' Intellectual-Hating GOP" by Scott Whitlock, www.newsbusters.org. September 15, 2011.

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• I believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Believe, Flying, Risk

  Charles A. Lindbergh, Reeve Lindbergh (2003). “The Spirit of St. Louis”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

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• Anyone who's not interested in model airplanes must have a screw loose somewhere.

  Paul MacCready

  Airplane, Flight, Not Interested

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• Then it was intoxicating. The smooth takeoff, and the free feeling of having the world drop away. Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers. North for the first time. It was still an adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening.

  James Salter

  Adventure, White, Feelings

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• I have the normal desire, experienced by everybody who's ever flown an airplane with a certain amount of zoom capability, to go a little bit higher and a little bit faster.

  Gordon Cooper

  Airplane, Desire, Normal

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• Flyers fell a certain kinship with the sight of the earth unencrusted by humanity, they want to see it that way in one sweeping view, in reassurance that nature still exists on her own, without a chain-link fence to hold her.

  Richard Bach

  Sight, Views, Humanity

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.200, Dell

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• On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.

  Epictetus

  Safety, Use, Remember

  Epictetus (2009). “The Enchiridion, or Handbook: With A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus”, p.220, The Floating Press

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• Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.

  Carl Sagan

  Bird, Flyers, Ability

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• God forgives man the time spent looking at airplane photos.

  Barrett Tillman

  Airplane, Men, Forgiving

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• It is not the visions but the activity which makes you happy, and the joy and glory of the flier is the flight itself.

  Isak Dinesen

  Joy, Vision, Flight

  Isak Dinesen (1987). “Out of Africa”, Crown Pub

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• Splutter, splutter. Yes - we're off - we're rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring - sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it!

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Dark, Light, Climbing

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• Nowadays a businessman can go from his office straight to the airport, get into his airplane and fly six hundred or seven hundred miles without taking off his hat. He probably will not even mention this flight, which a bare twenty-five years ago would have meant wearing leather jacket and helmet and goggles and risking his neck every minute of the way.

  Percy Knauth

  Airplane, Airports, Years

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• No, he probably wouldn't mention it - except to another flier. Then they will talk for hours. They will re-create all the things seen and felt in that wonderful world of air: the sense of remoteness from the busy world below, the feeling of intense brotherhood formed with those who man the radio ranges and control towers and weather stations that bring the pilot home, the clouds and the colors, the surge of the wind on their wings.

  Percy Knauth

  Home, Men, Clouds

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• Are we lost, or are we found at last? On earth we strive for our various needs, because so goes the fundamental law of man. Aloft, at least for a little while, the needs disappear. Likewise the striving. In the thoughts of man aloft, food and evil become mixed and sometimes reversed. This is the open door to wisdom. Aloft, the earth is ancient and man is young, regardless of his numbers, for there, aloft he may reaffirm his suspicions that he may not be so very much. This is the gateway to humility.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Humility, Men, Doors

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• As the years go by, he returns to this invisible world rather than to earth for peace and solace. There also he finds a profound enchantment, although he can seldom describe it. He can discuss it with others of his kind, and because they too know and feel its power they understand. But his attempts to communicate his feelings to his wife or other earthly confidants invariable end in failure.

  Ernest K. Gann

  Years, Profound, Wife

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• Remember that the Clerget lands very fast, at over forty miles an hour, and with that great engine in the nose the tail was light. Watch it... Lovely.

  Nevil Shute

  Light, Land, Lovely

  Nevil Shute (1958). “The RAINBOW and the ROSE”

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• I think it is love of that blue vault of sky that becomes your playground if, and only if, you are a fighter pilot. You don't understand it if you fly from A to B in straight and level, and merely climb and descend. You're moving through the basement of that bolt of blue.

  Robin Olds

  Moving, Thinking, Blue

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• I had that morning gone to say my farewells to Broadhurst and to the RAF. I had made a point of going to HQ at Schleswig in my 'Grand Charles.' Coming back I had taken him high up in the cloudless summer sky, for it was only there that I could fittingly take my leave. Together we climbed for the last time straight towards the sun. We looped once, perhaps twice, we lovingly did a few slow, meticulous rolls, so that I could take away in my finger-tips the vibration of his supple, docile wings.

  Pierre Clostermann

  Summer, Morning, Farewell

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• And should I not, had I but known, have flung the machine this way and that, once more to feel it live under my hand, have sported in the sky and laughed and sung, knowing that never after should I feel so free, so sure in hazard, so secure, riding the daylight in the pride of youth? No more horizons wider than Hope! No more the franchise of the sky, the freedom of the blue! No more! Farewell to wings! Down to the little earth!

  Cecil Arthur Lewis

  Farewell, Pride, Knowing

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• That distant day had a significance I could not give it then. So we wheeled and came back south towards the city. The Temple of Heaven slipped by underneath, that perfect pattern in its ample park. Then the wide plain ruled to the far horizon. Soon the aerodrome.

  Cecil Arthur Lewis

  Cities, Giving, Perfect

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