Predictions Quotes - Page 8

• The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation, my boy!

  Sam Hughes

  Boys, Play, Devil

  8 Copy quote

• [Airmail was] an impractical sort of fad, and had no place in the serious job of postal transportation.

  Paul Henderson

  Jobs, Fads, Serious

  4 Copy quote

• Oh well, I suppose lots of people will do it now.

  Arthur Whitten Brown

  People, Aviation, Oh Well

  6 Copy quote

• It is highly unlikely that an airplane, or fleet of them, could ever sink a fleet of Navy vessels under battle conditions.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Airplane, Navy, Battle

  4 Copy quote

• The aeroplane is tragically unsuited for ocean service.

  Hugo Eckener

  Ocean, Aviation, Aeroplanes

  10 Copy quote

• The first real air-liner, carrying some five or six hundred passengers, will probably appear after or towards the end of the battle between fixed and moving-wing machines. And it will be a flying boat.

  Oliver Stewart

  Real, Moving, Air

  Oliver Stewart (1928). “Aeolus: Or, The Future of the Flying Machine”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The helicopter has never achieved much success and . . .may be classes with the ornithopter as obsolete.

  Oliver Stewart

  Class, May, Aviation

  4 Copy quote

• In less than twenty-five years . . . the motor-car will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it.

  Philip Gibbs

  Running, Years, Car

  Philip Gibbs (1928). “The Day After To-morrow: What is Going to Happen to the World?”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is my contention that an agent ideal to the use of the scientific militarist, for both the air raid and the long distance bombardment is now in the process of development; that its eventual perfection is but a matter of time; and its use in warfare is certain to occur. I refer to the rocket. The perfection of the rocket in my opinion will give to future warfare the horror unknown in previous conflicts and will make possible destruction of nations, in a cool, passionless and scientific fashion.

  David Lasser

  Fashion, Distance, Future

  5 Copy quote

• The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] . . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.

  Richard van der Riet Woolley

  Future, Believe, Space

  5 Copy quote

• The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.

  Hermann Goring

  Razors, Aviation, Blades

  135 Copy quote

• The Air Corps . . . does not, at this time, feel justified in obligating . . . funds for basic jet propulsion research and experimentation.

  George Brett

  Air, Research, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as wellknown as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads.

  Harry Bruno

  Teenage, War, School

  7 Copy quote

• The way to fly is to go straight up . . . Such a machine (the helicopter) will never compete with the aeroplane, though it will have specialized uses, and in these it will surpass the aeroplane. The fact that you can land at your front door is the reason you can't carry heavy loads efficiently.

  Emile Berliner

  Technology, Land, Doors

  28 Copy quote

• We are coming into a new era of flight, an ear in which all past conception of time and distance is changing and changing at a very, very rapid rate.

  Allan Haines Loughead

  Distance, Past, Eras

  7 Copy quote

• Possibly everyone will travel by air in another fifty years. I'm not sure I like the idea of millions of planes flying around overhead. I love the sky's unbroken solitude. I don't like to think of it cluttered up by aircraft, as roads are cluttered up by cars. I feel like the western pioneer when he saw barbed-wire fence lines encroaching on his open plains. The success of his venture brought the end of the life he loved.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Thinking, Years, Sky

  27 Copy quote

• I think people are going to return to sanity when they see how ridiculous many of these charges are, and how the predictions are not borne out.

  Dixie Lee Ray

  Thinking, People, Return

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. 'Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the Moon; and how happy they shall be that are first successful in this attempt.

  John Wilkins

  Mean, Successful, Moon

  "A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet". Book by John Wilkins, Book 1, Chapter 14, p. 238-239, 1640.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them.

  Joseph Addison

  People, Giving, Flying

  Joseph Addison (1860). “The Tatler. The Guardian”, p.378

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

  Samuel Johnson

  Air, Swim, Different

  Samuel Johnson (1850). “The history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, a tale”, p.5

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fall, Men, Air

  Samuel Johnson (1940). “The reader's Johnson: a representative selection from his writings”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Air

  9 Copy quote

• I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life.

  Victor Hugo

  Believe, Air, Water

  8 Copy quote

• Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? ... You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am.

  Jules Verne

  Believe, Struggle, Air

  4 Copy quote