GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Samuel Johnson
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There are 3 quotes matching Samuel Johnson in the collection:
What would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security.
Samuel Johnson
A Dissertation on the Art of Flying, The History of Rasselas, 1759.
He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure… The labor of rising from the ground will be great, … but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, 1759.
We now know a method of mounting into the air, and I think we are not likely to know more. The vehicles can serve no use till we can guide them; and they can gratify no curiosity till we mount with them to greater heights than we can reach without; till we rise above the tops of the highest mountains, which we have yet not done. We know the state of the air in all its regions, to the top of Teneriffe, and, therefore, learn nothing from those who navigate a balloon below the clouds. The first experiment, however, was bold, and deserves applause and reward. But since it has been performed, and its event is known, I had rather now find a medicine that can ease an asthma.
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Letter to Dr. Brocklesby, 6 October 1784.
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