Quotes on Aviation

As soon as we left the ground, I knew I had to fly.

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace, The soul that knows it not, knows no release, From little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear The sound of wings.

Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.

Fighter pilot is an attitude. It is cockiness. It is aggressiveness. It is self-confidence. It is a streak of rebelliousness, and it is competitiveness. But there's something else - there's a spark. There's a desire to be good. To do well; in the eyes of your peers, and in your own mind.

There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.

Never stop being a kid, Richard. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.

Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.

All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.

I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.

Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.

My father had been opposed to my flying from the first and had never flown himself. However, he had agreed to go up with me at the first opportunity, and one afternoon he climbed into the cockpit and we flew over the Redwood Falls together. From that day on I never heard a word against my flying and he never missed a chance to ride in the plane.

I believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead.

Regulation has gone astray. . . . Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.

You'll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.'

My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.