Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of bravery and adventure over safety and criticism.
Charles Lindbergh's quote reflects on the nature of courage and the willingness to take risks in life, suggesting that those who criticize risk-takers from the safety of their homes lack understanding of the true essence of living. He questions the worth of a life lived without daring adventures, highlighting the idea that a life filled with courage, even if it leads to death, is preferable to a mundane existence devoid of challenges.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to encourage people to take risks.
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.
To me, wrestling is therapy. No matter how bad my personal situation is, when I step into the ring, all my troubles disappear. My baggage stays in the back where it belongs.
There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.
A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity.
Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.
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