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.
My religion is nature. Thatβs what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing
Next time a sunrise steals your breath or a meadow of flowers leave you speechless, remain that way. Say nothing, and listen as Heaven whispers, "Do you like it? I did it just for you."
Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.
The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stas were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust.
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