If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a preference for the natural beauty and freedom of birds over the man-made technology of airplanes.
In this quote, Charles Lindbergh reflects on the intrinsic value and beauty of nature, specifically birds, in contrast to the artificial constructs of human invention such as airplanes. This preference highlights a longing for simplicity, freedom, and the organic experience of life that birds symbolize, suggesting that nature holds a deeper allure than technological advancements.
In practice
In a speech about environmental conservation, one might quote Lindbergh to emphasize the beauty of wildlife.
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.
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.
Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run.
I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind.
Dublin dwindles so beautifully; there is no harsh separation between it and the country. It fades away, whereas London seems to devour the country; an army of buildings come and take away a beautiful park, and you never seem to get quite out of sight of a row of houses.
A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.
Tell the Earth how much you care, how beautiful she is, and how much you love her. Ask for her forgiveness for having been so careless.
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