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.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a concern for the future of the sky and nature as air travel increases.
In this quote, Charles Lindbergh reflects on the potential future where air travel is ubiquitous, expressing a bittersweet sentiment about the loss of the sky's natural beauty and solitude. He likens this change to the encroachment of civilization on untouched landscapes, lamenting how advancements can lead to the loss of the unspoiled environments that bring peace and inspiration.
In practice
This quote could open a discussion at a climate change seminar about the balance between technological advancement and preserving nature.
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.
There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.
Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea Past the houses, past the headlands Into deep eternity! Bred as we, among the mountains Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land?
The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
The earth was all before me. With a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about; and should the chosen guide Be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way.
Sing a song of seasons; something bright in all, flowers in the summer, fires in the fall.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.