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.
No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul.
During my New York run, I injured my voice badly. I was getting increasingly hoarse, and it finally gave up. The doctor said I had two choices. Either cancel things, or try my luck and perhaps never speak again. That's not much of a choice.
I am not made for lonely expeditions. In the sixties, I climbed during the day so I wouldn't have to be alone. I finally learned to stay up for weeks in the high altitude all by my own without being afraid.
To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing.
I don't get out of bed every day to play to win a tennis tournament, I honestly don't. I do it because I love it, but it also provides me with a platform to do what I really want: which is to continue to change the perceptions around disability.
I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.
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