Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.
Interpretation
Flying alters our perception of distance and time, making us reconsider how we measure them.
In this quote, Charles Lindbergh reflects on the profound impact of aviation on our understanding of space and time. With the advent of flight, traditional measures like time and distance are transformed, as flying allows us to traverse vast expanses quickly, challenging our conventional perceptions and redefining our experiences of the world.
In practice
During a speech on technological advancements, one might quote Lindbergh to emphasize the transformative power of flight.
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life.
Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life?
In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.
We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.
We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.
We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.
I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that's true to some degree.
To become the enemy, see yourself as the enemy of the enemy
The last clear definite function of man β muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need β this is man.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.