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.
A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.
With no mind, flowers lure the butterfly; With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms. Yet when flowers bloom, the butterfly comes; When the butterfly comes, the flowers bloom.
Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms β if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
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