Lots of interesting assorted stuff here, a mixed bag of quotations that don’t fit neatly the other sections of the flying quotes collection. Reminds me of a special section with an intriguing name I saw at Heffers bookstore in Cambridge, England:
I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer—born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.
Neil Armstrong
The Engineered Century, speech to the National Press Club, 22 February 2000.
See more Neil Armstrong aviation quotes.
Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines.
Attributed to Enzo Ferrari
1960. The sentiment may have been true at the time, but with faster speeds and power limitations, Ferrari’s became aerodynamic.
The story is that Belgian racer/journalist Paul Frère was concerned about the drag caused by the huge front windscreen on the Ferrari 250 TR he was going to drive in the high-speed 24 Hours of Le Mans. He asked Enzo about it directly and supposedly l'Ingegnere (The Engineer) replied with the great line. Whether he said exactly is uncertain, it was also reported as “You don't need to worry about aerodynamics, if you build a superb motor”.
If anyone tries to tell you something about an aeroplane which is so damn complicated that you can’t understand it, you can take it from me it’s all balls.
R. J. Mitchell
Aeronautical engineer and designer of the Spitfire, told to test pilot Jeffrey Quill in the 1930’s. Quoted in his 1983 book Spitfire: A Test Pilot's Story.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Holy Bible, Isaiah 14:14. King James version.
See more Holy Bible aviation quotes.
It is not necessarily impossible for human beings to fly, but it so happens that God did not give them the knowledge of how to do it. It follows, therefore, that anyone who claims that he can fly must have sought the aid of the devil. To attempt to fly is therefore sinful.
Roger Bacon
Thirteenth century Franciscan friar. Quoted in 2000 Southern Illinois University Press book The American Aviation Experience: A History.
See more Roger Bacon aviation quotes.
Second to the right, and straight on till morning.
Peter Pan
In the James M. Barrie play of the same name. Changed in some productions (and all Disney versions) to “Second star on the right.” Chapter 4, The Flight, “That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.” First seen on the London stage 1904.
Captain Kirk quotes this line in the 1991 movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country just before he and the original crew of the Enterprise go on one last trip.
I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly.
Sir Winston Churchill
Letter to Lord Bevearbrook, 26 September 1953.
See more Winston Churchill aviation quotes.
Any one who has common-sense and patience may learn to fly. In the aviation schools a good working knowledge of airmanship is ordinarily gained in a total of four hundred minutes spent in the air, divided into a score of lessons. The air would almost seem the natural element of man, such has been the progress in flying during the past few years.
Francis A. Collins
First lines of the book The Air Man His Conquest In Peace And War, 1917.
Our drummer learned to fly, so I said, ‘If a drummer can learn to fly, then anyone can’.
Bruce Dickinson
Pilot and lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. CNN interview 26 October 2007.
This book is dedicated to all those who fell by the airside, for nothing is wasted, and every apparent failure is but a challenge to others.
Amy Johnson
Dedication to Sky Roads of the World, 1939.
See more Amy Johnson aviation quotes.
Man’s flight through life is sustained by the power of his knowledge.
Austin 'Dusty' Miller
The quote on the Eagle & Fledgling statue at the U.S. Air Force Academy. It was donated to the academy by personnel from Air Training Command in 1952.
Although powered aircraft may express the language of flight, soaring is its eloquence.
Richard Miller
Soaring magazine editor, 1967.
See more Richard Miller aviation quotes.
Somebody with a flair for small cynicism once said: “We live and do not learn.”
But I have learned some things. I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep - leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour, because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.
Beryl Markham
West With The Night, 1942
See more Beryl Markham aviation quotes.
I have been luckier than the law of averages should allow. I could never be so lucky again.
Jimmy Doolittle
From his autobiography, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, 1991.
See more Jimmy Doolittle aviation quotes.
At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.
Igor Sikorsky
Reported in AOPA Pilot magazine February 2003.
See more Igor Sikorsky aviation quotes.
Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
Bill Bryson
First page of chapter one, The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way, 1990.
The English, a haughty nation, arrogate to themselves the empire of the sea; the French, a buoyant nation, make themselves masters of the air.
Comte de Provence (later Louis XVIII of France)
Impromptu on the first successful balloon ascension by the brothers Montgolfier, 1783. It rhymes in the original French:
“Les Anglais, nation trop fière, S’arrogent l’empire des mers; Les Français, nation légère, S’emparent de celui des airs.”
Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, and to the Germans that of the air.
Jean Paul Richter
Quoted by Thomas Carlyle, Edinburgh Review, 1827.
The weird thing is that I hate to fly, and the quote that I give people is that every time I get off a plane, I view it as a failed suicide attempt.
Barry Sonnenfeld
Movie director, after being a passenger in a crash of a Gulfstream jet landing at the Van Nuys airport. Reported in Variety 16 February 1999.
Chicks dig us, and guys think we’re cool.
Tom Krizek
Airline captain. Personal conversation, 1995.
The time has come when the world is going to need a new type of men—almost a new race. These are the Flying Men. The great dream of centuries has come true, and man now has the key to the sky. Every great invention which affects the habits and customs of a people brings about changes in the people themselves. How great, then, must be the changes to be brought about by the flying machine, and how strangely new the type of man that it carries up into a new world, under absolutely new conditions!
Augustus Post
First sentence of Part I of The Curtiss Aviation Book, 1912.
I hope they don't think I'm paying for this class.
Max Sylvester
On his third lesson, radio call to ATC after his instructor became unconscious and he got to log some PIC time and a first landing. 31 August 2019. Reported in The Guardian newspaper 7 August 2020.
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.
Chinese proverb
See more Chinese proverb aviation quotes.
There is a lot of obscurity surrounding these questions. Indeed, I must confess that I have never encountered a simple answer to them even in the specialist literature.
Albert Einstein
On the aerodynamic question of how a wing works. Elementary Theory of Water Waves and of Flight, published in the journal Die Naturwissenschaften, 1916. In 1917, on the basis of his theory, he designed an airfoil that was built by Luftverkehrsgesellschaft in Berlin. It was not a success. In 1954 he described his excursion into aeronautics as a “youthful folly” (quoted in Scientific American, February 2020).
The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall.
Attributed to Orville Wright
It became the weary answer to questions of how wings work.
See more Orville Wright aviation quotes.
If we could only see the spray!
Attributed to Anthony Fokker
Founder of Fokker Aviatik GmbH, lamenting the invisibility of air over the wing.
Quoted as Fokker “once mused” by Wolfgang Langewiesche in The Three Secrets of Human Flight, Harpers magazine April 1941, and by C. G. Grey “talking to me one day, and feeling frightfully depressed, he said, ‘If aeroplane designers could see the spray in the air as you can see the spray from water they would all be ashamed of themselves’”, Quaint Ideas for Aeroplanes, Newnes Practical Mechanics magazine, May 1951.
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.
Jackie 'Jack' Ridley
Chief of the USAF Flight Test Engineering Laboratory, played by Levon Helm, in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff.
I went up with Yeager in a Piper Cub. I figured if I died while flying with the world’s greatest pilot, it would be OK.
Sam Shepard
Who played Chuck Yeager in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff. Quoted in An Oral History of the Epic Space Film The Right Stuff, Wired magazine, November 2014.
When I posted this quote on Twitter, Chuck remembered flying Sam and wrote that “He barely fit in it”. @GenChuckYeager, Twitter, 21 Janurary 2020.
If you don’t get in that plane you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
Rick Blaine
Played by Humphrey Bogart, in the 1942 movie Casablanca. Screenplay by Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, and Howard Koth.
Straighten up and fly right.
Song written by Nat 'King' Cole
First written down in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska, in the winter of 1943. One of the first vocal hits for the King Cole Trio, reaching number one on the U.S. Harlem Hit Parade for ten nonconsecutive weeks and peaking at number nine on the pop charts. The song was based on a black folk tale that Cole's father had used as a theme for one of his sermons. In the tale, a buzzard takes different animals for a joy ride. When he gets hungry, he throws them off on a dive and eats them for dinner. A monkey who had observed this trick goes for a ride; he wraps his tail around the buzzard's neck and gives the buzzard a big surprise by nearly choking him to death.
The song has been covered many times, for example The Andrews Sisters in 1944, Sammy David Jr., Diana Krall, and Robbie Williams. It was used in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff and the 1995 movie The Tuskegee Airmen. It was added to the National Registry in 2005.
Anybody can jump a motorcycle. The trouble begins when you try to land it. I never missed a take-off in my life.
Evel Knievel
Quoted in Stuart Barker’s 2008 book : Life of Evel.
Remember the first principle of wing walking. Don’t let go of something unless you have a firm grip of something else.
Dick Truly
NASA administrator. Reported in AW&ST 24 February 2003.
As a piece of applied science the aeroplane has a place alongside the wheel, gunpowder, the printing press and the steam engine as one of the great levers of change in world history. The effect of aircraft on the way we live has been profound: they have shrunk the world, mingling previously isolated cultures, they have added a menacing dimension to warfare, spawned new technologies, created new economic zones and given us a toehold in Space.
Ivan Rendall
First paragraph of the introduction, Reaching for the Skies, 1988.
Talking about airplanes is a very pleasant mental disease.
Sergei Sikorsky
AOPA Pilot magazine, February 2003.
All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.
Sir Sydney Camm
Aeronautical engineer and designer of the Hawker Hurricane, quoted in The Telegraph newspaper, 7 June 2005. The UK Minister of Defence, Dennis Healey, made this (more boring) statement:
“The fundamental reason for our decision of the TSR-2 was the cost of the programme was out of all proportion to the aircraft’s military value.” Quoted in the 2021 book Britain’s Glorious Aircraft Industry: 100 Years of Success, Setback and Change.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Travels with a Donkey, (OK, so this one may not be about flying, but I like it and it’s my webpage.) 1879.
See more Robert Louis Stevenson aviation quotes.
Every year, more people are killed by injuries caused by donkeys than those caused by aircraft.
Found in The Toastmaster, the official journal of Toastmasters’ International.
Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.
Ivan Pavlov
Letter Bequest to the Academic Youth of Soviet Russia, 1936. Also widely attributed to Linus Pauling, American quantum chemist and biochemist.
Daddy, the plane turned into a boat.
Sophia Sosa
A 4-year-old traveling with her family on US Airways flight 1549, after the A320 was forced to ditch into the Hudson River. Reported on 2 February 2009 by Time magazine, 15 January 2009.
Motor cut. Forced landing. Hit cow. Cow died. Scared me.
Dean Smith
Telegraph to his chief, quoted by Amelia Earhart, The Fun of It, 1932.
See more Dean Smith aviation quotes.
Night flying in blacked-out Britain is like flying up a cow’s ass.
Squadron Leader Earl Bracken
RAF.
The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot,
And whether pigs have wings.
Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass, 1872.
See more Lewis Carroll aviation quotes.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
Walt Whitman
First four lines of O Captain! my Captain!, 1865.
Of course the captain is not a flying pilot. And indeed, the poem isn’t about a ship's captain at all, but is an extended metaphor about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln.
See more Walt Whitman aviation quotes.
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help — for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of , 1859 translation by Edward Fitzgerald.
The daily bread of our eyes. The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
25 May 1843.
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth.
John Milton
Comus, 1634.
See more John Milton aviation quotes.
Some newspapers have an adversarial approach to the Boeing Company that actually nauseates me and I’ve stopped reading them. I spent fifteen years on the Boeing crash investigation committee, and I learned first hand the difference between what gets reported in the paper and what the facts are. I concluded that there was almost no relationship between what was written there and the facts, and it kind of made me nervous about reading anything else. I just quit taking the papers.
Granville 'Granny' Frazier
Director of engine programs, Boeing commercial division. Quoted in the 1996 book Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777.
Does anyone on board know how to fly a plane?
Elaine
Speaking over the cabin speakers in the 1980 movie Airplane!
The art of flying is to perfect the interplay of inertial and gravitational masses.
Claudia de Rham
Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College. A perfect description of flying — from the viewpoint of a physicist working at the interface of gravity, cosmology, and particle physics. She is also a pilot. In her wonderful 2024 book on the physics of gravity, The Beauty of Falling.
In a 2018 interview, she said this: “I would have all these ideas in my mind, all these problems, but when you fly you have to focus on something very different. It clears your mind, and all these new connections get created, and you come up with new ideas.”
Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me.
Rick Perry
Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate, explaining his student college record of C, D & F grades. He received a low-scoring degree in animal science, then joined the U.S. Air Force becoming a C-130 pilot. Speech at Liberty University, 14 September 2011.
Although man is not armed by nature nor is naturally swiftest in flight, yet he has something better by far — reason. For by the possession of this function he exceeds the beasts to such a degree that he subdues … You see, therefore, how much the gift of reason surpasses mere physical equipment.
Tina Stiefel
Science, Reason, and Faith in the Twelfth Century, 1976.
What of the Wright boys in Dayton? Just around the corner they had a shop and did a bicycle business — and they wanted to fly for the sake of flying. They were Man the Seeker, Man on a Quest. Money was their last thought, their final absent-minded idea. They threw out a lot of old mistaken measurements and figured new ones that stood up when they took off and held the air and steered a course. They proved that “the faster you go the less power you need.” One of them died and was laid away under blossoms dropped from zooming planes. The other lived on to meditate: what is attraction? when will we learn why things go when they go? what and where is the power?
Carl Sandburg
The People, Yes, section 89, 1936.
See more Carl Sandburg aviation quotes.
Flight was a metaphor for the new Nietzschean age that was dawning. The deeds if the technological hero’s of the twentieth century would equal, and perhaps exceed, those of the mythical figures of the Ancient World… . The urge to dominate, to master, to conquer, was the motivation that drove men to fly. Speed was the divinity of the new century, to be worshipped at any cost. the cult of movement required victims. In its service, no sacrifice was too great. Aviators were the new aristocracy. Power and primacy would come to those peoples who dominated the air … Death was the price that man would have to pay in order to live like gods in a world of fast machines.
Robert Wohl
Last paragraph of A Passion For Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination 1908-1918, 1994.
For someone who’s crazy about being in the air, dying down on the ground is something of an abdication.
Maryse Bastié
French aviator who set several international records for female aviators during the 1930s. She did die in an airplane crash, 6 July 1951. Quoted in the 2013 book Women Aviators: From Amelia Earhart to Sally Ride, Making History in Air and Space.
When wild the head-wind beat,
Thy sovereign Will commanding
Bring them who dare to fly
To a safe landing.
Duncan Campbell Scott
Hymn for Those in the Air, RCAF.
No, son — you’re not up there alone — not with all the things you come through. You have the greatest co-pilot in the world even if there is just room for one in that fighter ship — no, you’re not alone.
Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., USAAF
God Is My Copilot, 1943.
See more Robert L. Scott aviation quotes.
We who fly are going to get to know that Great Flying Boss in the sky better and better.
Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., USAAF
God Is My Copilot, 1943.
See more Robert L. Scott aviation quotes.
On the second day after I arrived at Cranwell I was commanded to report to ‘the flights’. I had imagined weeks if not months of tedious ‘bull’ and ground instruction before I was even allowed to smell an aircaft.
They had a special smell — burnt castor oil and dope — which will still bring nostalgic sparkles to the eyes of an old pilot.
Air ViceMarshal A.G
Dudgeon, RAF, The Luck of the Devil, 1985.
If we love to fly so much, how come we’re always in such a hurry to get there?
Louie Manyak
In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose.
Anon
The vilest enemy of the morale of aeronautics is a scab.
David Behnecke
Founder of the Air Line Pilots Association, editorial in Air Line Pilot magazine, 20 April 1932.
If a prisoner, he must escape; if dead he must come back to life.
L’Illustration newspaper
Referring to the disappearance of French WWI ace Guynemer. Quoted in 1968 book The Great Air War: The Men, the Planes, the Saga of Military Aviation, 1914 - 1918.
The whole history of the Canadian North can be divided into two periods — before and after the aeroplane.
Hugh L. Keenleyside
Deputy Canadian Minister of Mines and Resources, October 1949.
I came to admire this machine which could lift virtually any load strapped to its back and carry it anywhere in any weather, safely and dependably. The C-47 groaned, it protested, it rattled, it leaked oil, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran rough, it staggered along on hot days and scared you half to death, its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to earth with a great sigh of relief — but it flew and it flew and it flew.
Len Morgan
The C-47 was the U.S. military designation for the DC-3. Quoted in the 1965 book The DC-3; the story of a fabulous airplane
See more Len Morgan aviation quotes.
Four other pieces of equipment that most senior officers came to regard as among the most vital to our success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the 2-ton truck, and the C-47 airplane. Curiously, none of these is designed for combat.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Crusade in Europe, 1948.
See more Dwight D. Eisenhower aviation quotes.
Give me fifty DC-3’s and the Japanese can have the Burma Road.
Chiang Kai-Shek
Quoted in the 1965 book The DC-3; the story of a fabulous airplane.
See more Chiang Kai-Shek aviation quotes.
We badly need an aircraft which will provide the DC-3’s reliability, its same ease of maintenance, and a similar low cost. One approach could be to marry a modern turboprop engine to a modern airframe. Surely our design capabilities are great enough to create a plane as advanced … as the DC-3 was in its day
U.S. Senator Mike Monroney
This former chairman of the Senate Aviation Subcommittee isn’t the only one to have this thought, lots of planes have claimed to be ‘the next DC-3’. None have succeeded. Quoted in the 1965 book The DC-3; the story of a fabulous airplane.
It doesn’t look nearly as big as it did the first time I saw one. Mickey McGuire and I used to sit hour after hour in the cockpit of the one that American used for training, at the company school in Chicago, saying to each other, ‘My God, do you think we’ll ever learn to fly anything this big?’
Ernest K. Gann
Quoted in Flying magazine, September 1977.
See more Ernest K. Gann aviation quotes.
I am not a very timid type. It’s very important to some people, but not to me. I have a simple philosophy: worry about those things you can fix. If you can’t fix it, don’t worry about it; accept it and do the best you can. But some folks worry about things they can’t do anything about until they lose their effectiveness.
Jimmy Doolittle
Interview in American Heritage magazine, April 1974.
See more Jimmy Doolittle aviation quotes.
I didn't start out to chart the skies; it's just no one had done it before.
E. B. Jeppesen
Captain Jeppesen (United) drew the first approach charts to airports, and founded the company that now supplies them electronically to airlines around the world. Quoted in the book 2007 book Capt. Jepp And The Little Black Book.
See more E. B. Jeppesen aviation quotes.
I didn't start the business to make a pile of money. I did it to preserve myself for old age.
E. B. Jeppesen
See more E. B. Jeppesen aviation quotes.
I am drawn to the new chart with all of its colorful intricacies as a gourmet must anticipate the details of a feast … I shall keep them forever. As stunning exciting proof that a proper mixture of science and art is not only possible but a blessed union.
Ernest K
Gann, Fate is the Hunter, 1961.
See more Ernest K. Gann aviation quotes.
To the IFR cognoscente, it’s a serious misunderstanding of instrument flying to think of an approach plate as a mere map for dropping out of the clouds in search of a runway, at the very least, a plate is a work of art and for the true zealot, it’s a symbol of man’s continuing struggle against the forces of nature.
Paul Bertorelli
IFR Magazine.
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
George MacDonald
At The Back Of The North Wind, 1868.
See more George MacDonald aviation quotes.
East to the dawn and southward to the sun,
Borne on aloft by Man’s great gift of wings
To legend lands that make the pulses run
And towns that leap with names of ancient Kings.
K. C. Gander Dower
Preface to Amateur Adventure, 1934.
If a flying machine really has to go anywhere it takes the railroad or a steamboat.
Syndicated US newspaper content
Late summer 1908. Seen here in the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper, Rochester, NY, 6 August 1908.
The Admiralty said it was a plane and not a boat, the Royal Air Force said it was a boat and not a plane, the Army were plain not interested.
Attributed to Sir Christopher Cockerell
Regards his invention the hovercraft.
Some fear flutter because they do not understand it. And some fear it because they do.
Attributed to Theodore von Kármán
Engineer and physicist active primarily in aerodynamics.
Simplicate and Add Lightness
Design philosophy of Ed Heinemann
Douglas Aircraft.
Flying is more thrilling than love for a man and far less dangerous.
Thea Rasche
1920’s aviatix. Quoted in Air & Space Smithsonian magazine, 1987.
See more Thea Rasche aviation quotes.
Beware of men on airplanes. The minute a man reaches thirty thousand feet, he immediately becomes consumed by distasteful sexual fantasies which involve doing uncomfortable things in those tiny toilets. These men should not be encouraged, their fantasies are sadly low-rent and unimaginative. Affect an aloof, cool demeanor as soon as any man tries to draw you out. Unless, of course, he’s the pilot.
Cynthia Heimel
Cited in Dictionary of Quotations, 2008.
My wife was a stewardess, flying DC-3's. That's how we met. She knew what was going on. So when we got married, I made her a promise — the obvious one. And I’ve kept it.
Captain Anson Harris
Played by Barry Nelson, in the 1970 movie Airport.
If you want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly.
Veronica
In the 1989 movie Heathers.
Hangover cure: Rigorous sex, hydration, hot bath, then go up for half an hour in an open aeroplane. (needless to say, with a non-hungover person at the controls).
Kingsley Amis
Everyday Drinking – The Distilled . 2008
The pilots life is founded on three things: sex, seniority, and salary, in that order.
Dr. Ludwig Ledere
Corporate physician, American Airlines. The line is sourced to him in Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos, 1995. However, the phrase was used in a 1950 article in ALPA’s magazine The Air Line Pilot.
I thought it would stop both engines, the plane would start to head towards a crash, and I would wake up.
Joseph Emerson
Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to crash an airliner from the jumpseat. He was under the inflence of psychedelic mushrooms taken two days earlier. Interview with the New York Times newspaper, published 10 November 2023. Let’s hope it starts real change in FAA medical certification.
But why do so many people dream of being able to fly? The answer that psycho-analysis gives is that to fly or to be a bird is only a disguise for another wish, and that more than one bridge, involving words or things, leads us to recognize what it is When we consider that inquisitive children are told that babies are brought by a large bird, such as the stork; when we find that the ancients represented the phallus as having wings; that the commonest expression in German for male sexual activity is vögeln [‘to bird’: Volgel is the German for ‘bird’]; that the male organ is actually called l’ucello [the bird] in Italian — all of these are only small fragments from a whole mass of connected ideas, from which we learn that in dreams the wish to be able to fly is to be understood as nothing else than the longing to be capable of sexual performance.
Sigmund Freud
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, 1964 Alan Tyson translation, published as Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci, 1910.
They tout The Joy of Sex, but it don’t last like The Fun of Flying.
Spoken by Lucille Benson
In the 1976 movie Silver Streak
A free ride and free food are two of the three things no pilot ever turns down.
Attributed to Dick Rutan
See more Dick Rutan aviation quotes.
Airplane buffs are a rabid bunch.
Wall Street Journal newspaper
In article about the TV show Pan Am, 23 September 2011.
See more Wall Street Journal aviation quotes.
There are many excellent pilots who would rather do anything than land a private airplane at Newark, Cleveland, or Chicago.
Aviation magazine
August 1935.
When the art of radio communication between pilots and ATC is improved, the result will be vastly increased areas of significant misunderstandings.
Robert Livingston
Flying The Aeronca, 1981.
See more Robert Livingston aviation quotes.
Anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isn’t great is lying to you. That jet thing is really good.
Oprah Winfrey
Speech to the graduating class at Duke University, 10 May 2009.
In part a flying machine and in part a deeath trap, the aeroplane has done both more and less that its sudden arrival among the great inventions of the age had promised. This combination of Chinese kite, an automobile motor, a resaurent fan, ballon rudders, junior bicycle wheels and ski runners, the whole strung together with piano wire and safeguarded with adhesive tape and mammoth rubber bands, sprang from toyland into the world of industry and finance with two plodding and pratical tinkers of genius — self-made engineers from the American school of try, try and try again — proved they could balance and steer it by a twist of its muslin. Now, the world turns a searching glance upon this machine which does so much and fails for treacherously.
Scientific American
May 1911.
See more Scientific American aviation quotes.
I think we can build a better plane.
William Boeing
The Boeing Company, later a company's motto, 1914.
See more William Boeing aviation quotes.
You Americans build airplanes like a Rolex watch. Knock it off the night table and it stops ticking. We build airplanes like a cheap alarm clock. But knock if off the table and it still wakes you up.
Alexander Tupolev
To Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich, quoted in Skunk Works.
Oe of my life rules was to never give up a free ride when you’re shark bait.
Lieutenant Colonel Dan House
SR-71 pilot describing his rescue from shark infested waters by a native canoe, Lockheed SR-71: The Secret Missions Exposed, 1993.
Nobody is going to drown. The plane is pressurized.
Capt Don Gallagher
Pilot of Stevens Flight 23, a Boeing 747 that crashed and sunk under the Atlantic Ocean, 1977.
To be clear, this is all in the movie Airport '77. was played by Jack Lemmon, screenplay by Michael Scheff and David Spector, based on the 1970 movie Airport, itself based on the novel by Arthur Hailey. It was the third movie in the Airport franchise, and actually received two Acadamy Award nominations. The premise is of course Bravo Sierra, but the plane used in filming was real, an ex American Airlines B747-123, N9667.
Well, aeronautically it was a great success. Socially it left quite a bit to be desired.
Attributed to Noel Coward
After being asked ‘How was your flight?’
Beyond the Sudd there is the desert, and nothing but the desert for almost three thousand miles, nor are the towns and cities that live in it successful in gainsaying its emptiness.
To me, desert has the quality of darkness; none of the shapes you see in it are real or permanent. Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless, and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility. When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of its coming is lost.
Beryl Markham
West With The Night, 1942.
See more Beryl Markham aviation quotes.
The transcontinental jet flight is a condensed metaphor of the escapist’s Geographical Change. One starts out wit the gorgeous hope that the self one abhors can be left behind. Three thousand miles is a powerful distance; such speed, such height should get you away before that self can catch up.
Jill Schary Robinson
Bed/Time/Story, 1974.
You little fool! don’t you know it is even dangerous to look at an airplane?
Spencer Tracy
Advice to Myrna Loy in the 1938 movie Test Pilot.
And if you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.
Air Boss Johnson
In the 1986 movie Top Gun.
Maverick: I feel the need …
Maverick & Goose (together): The need for speed.
Maverick and Goose
Played by Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards In the 1986 movie Top Gun written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr..
See more Top Gun movie aviation quotes.
Charlie: Excuse me Lieutenant. Is there something wrong?
Maverick: Yes ma’am. The data on the MIG is inaccurate.
Charlie: How’s that Lieutenant?
Maverick:: Well I just happened to see a MIG-28 do …
Goose: We … we.
Maverick: Sorry Goose. We happened to see a MIG-28 do a 4G negative dive.
Charlie: Where did you see this?
Maverick: That’s classified.
Charlie: That’s what?
Maverick: That’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
Charlie, Maverick, and Goose
Played by Kelly McGillis, Tom Cruise, and Anthony Edwards in the 1986 movie Top Gun written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr..
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Air Force One has more televisions that any plane in history. They've got them in closets, they've got them on ceilings, floors. They've got more … You can't escape a television.
President Donald Trump
Speech to the RNC, 24 August 2020. He clearly has never flown JetBlue!
See more Donald Trump aviation quotes.
In the early days it was fun to fly. You could soar over rooftops and trees, or drop down to meet a passing train and wave at the engineer. The whole sky belonged to you. now there are so many regulations. The sky is crowded. All the fun is gone.
Katherine Stinson
Quoted in : The Flying Schoolgirl by Debra L. Winegarten, 2000.
See more Katherine Stinson aviation quotes.
To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you’re truly wireless.
Attributed to Ted Turner
We’d have more luck playing pick-up sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak.
Del Griffith
Payed by John Candy, in the 1987 movie Airplanes, Trains & Automobiles.
It looked like a Taco Bell after an earthquake.
Karen Breslau
Reporter for Newsweek magazine describing Air Force One after hitting severe air turbulence while serving Mexican food, 1996.
Selling airplanes.
Alvin 'Tex' Johnson
Boeing test pilot, asked by Boeing President William Allen what he thought he was doing the day before after two surprise barrel rolls of the new Dash 80 (later the B-707) airliner over a crowd of 250,000 people at the Seattle Gold Cup, 8 August 1955.
Tex explained the maneuver was harmless, performed at one G. In his book Tex Johnston: Jet-Age Test Pilot he says “the airplane does not recognize attitude, providing a maneuver is conducted at one G. It knows only positive and negative imposed loads and variations in thrust and drag. The barrel roll is a one G maneuver and quite impressive, but the airplane never knows it’s inverted.” Allen responded:
“You know that. Now we know that. But just don’t do it anymore.”
Airplanes are like women — pick what you like and try to get it away from the guy who has it, then dress it out to the limit of your wallet and taste.
Stephen Coonts
The Cannibal Queen: A Flight into the Heart of America, 1992.
See more Stephen Coonts aviation quotes.
Flying around the world is like raising kids. When you’ve finally figured out how to do it the right way, you’ve finished.
Ron Bower
Who has flown around the world solo in a helicopter.
The helicopter appeared so reluctant to fly forward that we even considered turning the pilot’s seat around and letting it fly backward.
Igor Sikorsky
Regards the prototype VS-300, 1940.
See more Igor Sikorsky aviation quotes.
You can't lomcevak in an F-16, but you can't go Mach in a Pitts.
Ed Hamill
Who has flown both aircraft.
No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent.
Grimes (née Claire Boucher)
Explaining the A-12 aeroplane part of her son's name X Æ A-12 Musk. She tweeted:
•X, the unknown variable ⚔️`
•Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)
•A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent 🤍
+
(A=Archangel, my favorite song)
(⚔️🐁 metal rat)
Elon Musk quickly corrected the typo, the plane is the SR-71. 5 May 2020.
It was wonderful to feel the delicate movement of the aircraft through the controls.
Helen Keller
Blind and deaf author and advocate, decribing the sensation of controling a airplane. She received Tactical Sign Language communication through her travel companion Polly Thompson. American Foundation for the Blind has a June 1946 newspaper clipping of the event from an unknown newspaper.
See more Helen Keller aviation quotes.
Myanmar Air traffic control: Hotel Bravo-Bravo Romeo Alpha, what is your departure point and destination?
Brian Jones: Departure point, Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland. Destination, somewhere in northern Africa.
Myanmar Air traffic control, after several seconds silence: If you’re going from Switzerland to northern Africa, what in hell are you doing in Myanmar?
Brian Jones and unknown controller
Approaching Myanmar’s air space during record around the world in a balloon trip, 9 March 1999.
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The mother eagle teachers her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable that they are forced to leave it and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. And just so does our God to us.
Hannah Whitall Smith
Evangelist, reformer, suffragist, author. The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, 1916.
Flying gives me complete control, freedom, and access to take my adventurous lifestyle to new heights.
Kellee Edwards
TV travel show host and pilot, in the 2021 new pilot edition of Flight Training magazine.
In spite of me it drew forward into the wind, notwithstanding my resistance it tended to rise. Thus I have discovered the secret of the bird and I comprehend the whole mystery of flying.
Jean Marie Le Bris
A French sea captain who experimented with gliders, circa 1850.
This is earth again, the earth where I’ve lived and now will live once more. Here are human beings … I’ve been to eternity and back. I know how the dead would feel to live again.
Charles Lindbergh
On sighting Ireland after first solo Atlantic crossing, 1927. In The Spirit of St. Louis, 1953.
See more Charles Lindbergh aviation quotes.
Of all the inventions that have helped to unify ar perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government.
Chiang Kai-shek
Wings Over China, Shanghai Evening Post, 12 March 1937.
See more Chiang Kai-shek aviation quotes.
We’d sit outside and watch the stars at night
She’d tell me to make a wish
I’d wish we both could fly
James McMurtry
The song Levelland, 1995.
He was neither seen nor heard as he fell, his body and his machine were never found. Where has he gone? By what wings did he manage to glide into immortality? Nobody knows: nothing is known. He ascended and never came back, that is all. Perhaps our descendents will say: He flew so high that he could not come down again.
L’Illustration
Weekly French newspaper, obituary of Capitaine Georges Marie Ludovic Jules Guynemer, 53 victories WWI, 6 October 1917.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan
Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science , 1979.
It was a magic caused by the collision of modern methods and old ones; modern history and ancient; accessibility and isolation. And it was a magic which could only strike spark about that time. A few years earlier, from the point of view of aircraft alone, it would have been impossible to reach these places; a few later, and there will be no such isolation.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Part of the preface to North to the Orient, 1935
See more Anne Morrow Lindbergh aviation quotes.
Not bad sport, but there's no place to go.
Glenn H Curtiss
First time he flew a dirigible. It was built by Tom Baldwin, with a Curtis engine. 1904. Quoted in the 1942 book Wings Over America: The Inside Story of American Aviation.
I have seen so much on my pilgrimage through my three-score years and ten,
That I wouldn’t be surprised to see a railroad in the air,
Or a Yankee in a flyin’ ship a-goin’ most anywhere.
J. H. Yates
The Old Ways and the New, in The Australian Journal: A Family Newspaper, 1888.
On wings of winds came flying all abroad.
Alexander Pope
Prologue to the Satires, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Composed in 1734, first published in 1735.
See more Alexander Pope aviation quotes.
I flew in combat in Vietnam. I got shot at, I shot back, I got shot down. Compared to this flight, I felt a lot safer in combat.
Dick Rutan
Regards engine failure over the Pacific during the record round-the-world flight, Newsweek magazine, 5 January 1987.
See more Dick Rutan aviation quotes.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Poem recited by the Mad Hatter
A parody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead -
There were no birds to fly.
Lewis Carroll
The Walrus and The Carpenter, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872.
See more Lewis Carroll aviation quotes.
Air show? Buzz-cut Alabamians spewing colored smoke from their whiz jets to the strains of Rock You Like A Hurricane? What kind of countrified rube is still impressed by that?
Sideshow Bob
On the TV show The Simpsons
Episode 137, ’s Last Gleaming, by Spike Ferensten. First aired 26 November 1995.
Let brisker youths their active nerves prepare
Fit their light silken wings and skim the buxom air.
Richard Owen Cambridge
Scriblerad, 1751.
It has been reserved for us to see flying a commonplace and ordinary event. That is a great fact, because no one can doubt that the development and discovery of the flying art definitely enlarges the boundaries of human activity. One cannot doubt that flying, to judge from the position which it has reached even today, must in the future exercise a potent influence, not only upon the habits of men, but upon the military destinies of states.
Winston Churchill
Speech at the Royal Aero Club dinner, Savoy Hotel, London. 4 March 1914. Quoted in 2005 book by his granson Wonston S. Churchill Never Give In! The Best of 's Speeches.
See more Winston Churchill aviation quotes.
Most of us [the test pilots] agreed the Cutlass [Chance-Vought F7U-3] could be made into a pretty good flying machine with a few modifications, like adding a conventional tail, tripling the thrust, cutting the nosewheel strut in half, completely redoing the flight control system, and getting someone else to fly it.
John Moore
The Wrong Stuff: Flying on the Edge of Disaster, 1997.
The simple expression ‘Suck, Squeeze, Bang and Blow’ is the best way to remember the working cycle of the gas turbine.
Rolls Royce training manual
2002.
If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of NASA to make one.
H. Ross Perot
American businessman and politician. Quoted in Computerland newsweekly, 10 November 1986.
Engineering is the science of doing things over again.
John E. 'Jack' Steiner
Chief engineer on the Boeing 727. A ‘summary he had once invented for a speech’, quoted in the 1965 book Billion Dollar Battle: The Story Behind the “Impossible” 727 Project.
See more John E. Steiner aviation quotes.
A passenger commented on an early Concorde flight that Mach 2 travel felt no different:
Yes. That was the difficult bit.
Sir George Edwards
Co-director of Concorde development. Quoted in 1982 book Concorde: New Shape in the Sky.
The sun is now climbing from the west. In winter it is possible to leave London after sunset, on the evening Concorde for New York, and watch the sun rise out of the west. Flying at Mach 2 at these latitudes will cause the sun to set in the west at three times its normal rate, casting, as it does so, a vast curved shadow of the earth, up and ahead of the aircraft.
Concorde First Officer Christopher Orlebar
British Airways.
The Boeing 747 is so big that it has been said that it does not fly; the earth merely drops out from under it.
Attributed to Captain Ned Wilson
Pan Am. In for example America By Air, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007.
I put the sweat of my life into this project, and if it’s a failure, I’ll leave the country and never come back.
Howard Hughes
To a U.S. Senate subcommittee regards the HK-1 Hughes Flying Boat, aka the Spruce Goose, 1946.
To propel a dirigible balloon through the air is like pushing a candle through a brick wall.
Alberto Santos-Dumont
Regarding Zepplin's Airship.
See more Alberto Santos-Dumont aviation quotes.
… the back motors of the ship are just holding it just enough to keep it from —
— it's burst into flame! Get this Charley, get this Charley … and it's flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast, all the humanity, and all the passengers. Screaming around me … I’m sorry, honestly, I can hardly breathe, I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charley that's terrible. I, I can’t … listen folks I’m going to have to stop for a minute, just because I’ve lost my voice, this is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.
Herb Morrison
Reporting for WLS radio, regards the end of LZ-129 the Hindenburg, 6 May 1937.
After Morrison recovered from the initial shock of the tragedy, he went on to calmly describe what he had witnessed. Listeners in Chicago and across the country didn’t hear Morrison's coverage of the disaster until the next day because his report was not broadcast live from Lakehurst. He and engineer Charlie Nehlsen had been experimenting with field recordings on huge acetate discs. They realized the gravity of their recordings as they found themselves being followed by German SS Officers. After hiding out for a few hours, the two managed to make a clean getaway and get back across the country to WLS. The chilling account aired the next day on the station and was the first recorded radio news report to be broadcast nationally by NBC.
Twenty years for 270 murders is less than a month per victim. It’s just not right.
Peter Lowenstein
Father of a young American killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, on the conviction of Libyan intelligence official Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, February 2001.
So there he is at last. Man on the Moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
Russell Baker
The New York Times, 21 July 1969.
Military pilots and then, soon, airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they could bend their native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.
Tom Wolfe
The Right Stuff, 1979.
See more Tom Wolfe aviation quotes.
If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it.
Blanch Lovell
Played by Jean Speegle Howard (yes, Ron Howard’s mother) in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. The scene has Commander Jim Lovell’s mum being told there’s been an accident on the mission to the Moon. The line was writen by an uncredited John Sayles.
Not so long ago, when I was a student in college, just flying an airplane seemed a dream. But that dream turned into reality.
Charles A. Lindbergh
Beginning his autobiography, The Spirit of St. Louis, 1953.
See more Charles Lindbergh aviation quotes.
Lone eagle of the wild Atlantic plain,
Tall, laughing boy, with sun-glints in your eyes,
Playfellow of the lightning and the rain,
Co-sentry with the old watchers of the skies.
Wendell Phillips Stafford
Regards Lindbergh. Circular, Illinois, issue 226, 1928.
CAN YOU CONSTRUCT WHIRLWIND ENGINE PLANE CAPABLE FLYING NONSTOP BETWEEN NEW YORK AND PARIS STOP IF SO PLEASE STATE COST AND DELIVERY DATE
Charles Lindburgh
Western Union telegram to Ryan Airlines, signed from ROBERTSON AIRCRAFT CORP to “get more consideration” after being turned down by Travel Air. 3 February 1927. Quoted in his 1953 book The Spirit of St. Louis.
CAN BUILD PLANE SIMILAR M ONE BUT LARGER WINGS CAPABLE OF MAKING FLIGHT COST ABOUT SIX THOUSAND WITH MOTOR AND INSTRUMENTS DELIVERY ABOUT THREE MONTHS
Donald Hall
Chief engineer, Ryan Airlines, next day reply to Charles Lindbergh’s request for feasibility of the airplane later known as The Spirit of St. Louis. M refers to their Model M. Westerrn Union telegram from San Diego, California, 4 February 1927.
The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead, even more than teamwork.
Igor Sikorsky
Quoted in his New York Times obituary, 27 October 1972.
See more Igor Sikorsky aviation quotes.
The time has arrived for my family to give back to America part of the reward that aviation has been instrumental in creating… . I hope the Dulles Center will introduce children to the same love for aviation that I have … An airplane rising into the sky is the only hope, the only way to reach into a bigger world.
Steven Udvar-Hazy
Founder of International Lease Finance Corporation, 7 October 1999. Contained in Mr. Udar-Hazy remarks as he donated $60 million to help build the Dulles expansion of the National Air and Space Museum. His family fled to the U.S. following the Soviet invasion of Hungary when he was twelve years old.
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.
Lord Darlington
In Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman, first performed on 20 February 1892, St. James Theatre, London.
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson
First line of her poem Hope, 1861. Published postumously in 1891.
See more Emily Dickinson aviation quotes.
Any damned fool can criticize, but it takes a genius to design it in the first place.
Edgar Schmued
Chief Designer North American Aviation. Quoted in a letter by Elenor Cree Edwards to Air & Space Smithsonian magazine, Volume 11 Number 5, 1996.
It's most probable the flying car concept will remain just that. Not vaporware, but still unobtanium.
Thomas B. Haines
Editor in Chief, AOPA Pilot magazine, April 2021.
Some are concerned about the risks from computer hackers with such a connected system. [A spokesman] said that with the current FAA software, it's not a problem. A recent White House panel on security concluded that [the] software is so out of date that no one could possibly hack into it.
Aviation Week & Space Technology
December 1996.
They’re multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off.
Robert Carroll
Pratt & Whitney spokesperson, explaining why the company charged the Air Force $999 for an ordinary pair of pliers, 1990. Newsweek magazine, 2 July 1990.
The important thing in aeroplanes is that they shall be speedy.
Baron Manfred Von Richthofen
May 1917. Quoted in Gunning for the Red Baron, 2006.
For a plane to fly well, it must be beautiful.
Marcel Dassault
Attributed in ads by Dassault Aviation.
Oh no, ’twasn’t the aviators. It was Beauty killed the Beast.
Carl Denham
Played by Robert Armstrong, final words of the 1933 movie King Kong. Screenplay by James Creelman and Ruth Rose.
Look boys I ain’t much of a hand at making speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beings if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back at home are counting on you and by golly we ain't about to let them down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing is over with. That goes for ever’ last one of you regardless of your race, color or creed. Now let’s get this thing on the hump … we got some flying to do.
Major T. J. 'King' Kong
Played by Slim Pickens, in the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George.
See more T. J. 'King' Kong aviation quotes.
Well boys, we've got three engines out, we've got more holes in us than a horse trader's mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing…but we've got one thing on those Russkies. At this height why thy might harpoon us but they dang sure ain't gonna spot us on no radar screen!
Major T. J. 'King' Kong
Played by Slim Pickens, in the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George.
See more T. J. 'King' Kong aviation quotes.
Here's to me in my sober mood
As I ponder, sit and think.
And here's to me in my drunken mood
As I gamble, sin and drink.
When my flying days are over
And from this world I pass
I hope they bury me upside down
So the world can kiss my ass.
anon
Fighter pilot's toast.
Kansas City Center, this is Air Force One. Would you please change our call sign to SAM 27000.
Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, USAF
39,000 feet over Missouri after being informed that passenger Richard Nixon was no longer president since Gerald Ford had been sworn into office. 9 Aug 1974.
They were heading from Washington D.C. to Nixon’s home, La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente, California.
SAM 27000 was the second of two Boeing VC-137C United States Air Force aircraft that were specifically configured and maintained for the use of the President of the United States. SAM 27000 comes from 'Special Air Mission' and its serial number 72-7000. It's on display now at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
We don’t really have any kind of regulatory structure at all.
President Barack Obama
Commenting on the state of FAA regulations regards drones, UAVs and model flying airplanes. Interview with CNN following a drone flown by a drunk crash landing on the White House lawn. 27 January 2015
The Wright brothers’ design … allowed them to survive long enough to learn how to fly.
Michael Potts
Spokesman, Beech Aircraft, regards the Wright wing, NY Times, 17 Apr 1984
We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing.
Orville Wright
How We Made The First Flight, Flying magazine, December 1918.
See more Orville Wright aviation quotes.
I found myself caught in them wires and the machine blowing across the beach heading for the ocean, landing first on one end and then on the other, rolling over and over, and me getting more tangled up in it all the time. I tell you, I was plumb scared. When the thing did stop for half a second I nearly broke up every wire and upright getting out of it.
John T. Daniels
He snapped the famous photo of the Wright's first flight, here describing what happened to the Wright Flyer later that day. Quoted in 2004 book The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright
Flying Machine Soars 3 Miles in Teeth of High Wind Over Sand Hills and Waves at Kitty Hawk on Carolina Coast
Steadily it pursued its way, first tacking to port, then to starboard, and then driving straight ahead. “It's a success,” declared Orville Wright to the crowd on the beach after the first mile had been covered. But the inventor waited. Not until he had accomplished three miles, putting the machine through all sorts of maneuvers en route, was he satisfied. Then he selected a suitable place to land, and gracefully circling drew his invention slowly to earth, where it settled, like some big bird, in the chosen spot.
“Eureka,” he cried, as did the alchemists of old.
Virginian-Pilot newspaper
Much embellished ‘report’ of the first 12 second flight. Published 18 December 1903.
I’ve seen him! I’ve seen him! Yes, I have today seen Wilbur Wright and his great white bird, the beautiful mechanical bird. There is no doubt! Wilbur and Orville Wright have well and truly flown.
Le Figaro
11 August 1908.
See more Le Figaro aviation quotes.
I believe that my course in sending our Kitty Hawk machine to a foreign museum is the only way of correcting the history of the flying machine, which by false and misleading statements has been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution. In its campaign to discredit others in the flying art, the Smithsonian has issued scores of these false and misleading statements. In a foreign museum this machine will be a constant reminder of the reasons for its being there, and after the people and petty jealousies of the day are gone, the historians of the future may examine the evidence impartially and make history accord with it. Your regret that this old machine must leave the country can hardly be so great as my own.
Orville Wright
Letter to the Smithsonian, regarding sending The Flyer to the Science Museum, London, England, in 1928. My granddad, William English, saw The Flyer there and told me about it.
See more Orville Wright aviation quotes.
The original Wright brothers aeroplane the world’s first power-driven, heavier-than-air machine in which man made free, controlled, and sustained flight invented and built by Wilbur and Orville Wright flown by them at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina December 17, 1903. By original scientific research the Wright brothers discovered the principles of human flight as inventors, builders, and flyers they further developed the aeroplane, taught man to fly, and opened the era of aviation.
Inscription next to The Flyer
When it was finally brought back to the United States and unveiled at the Smithsonian in 1948, after that institution dropped claims that Langley was first with powered flight.
There was something strange about the tall, gaunt figure. The face was remarkable, the head suggested that of a bird, and the features, dominated by a long, prominent nose that heightened the birdlike effect were long and bony… . From behind the greyish blue depths of his eyes there seemed to shine something of the light of the sun. From the first moments of my conversation with him I judged Wilbur Wright to be a fanatic of flight, and I had no longer any doubt that he had accomplished all he claimed to have done. He seemed born to fly.
Daily Mail newspaper
17 August 1908.
This morning at 3:15, Wilbur passed away, aged 45 years, 1 month and 14 days. A short life full of consequences, an unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the light clearly, pursuing it steadily, he lived and died.
Bishop Milton Wright
In his diary, 30 May 1912.
And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
William Shakespeare
Saye, scene vii, act IV, Henry VI, Part 2, written c. 1590-91.
See more William Shakespeare aviation quotes.
He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machines.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Regards Leonardo da Vinci. Widely cited, including Jean Renoir’s intimate biography Renior, My Father, 1962.
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