Quotes

 

“You love a lot of things if you live around them. But then there’s isn’t any woman and there isn’t any horse, not any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane. And men who love them are faithful to them even though they may leave them for others. Man has one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely airplane he loses it to, there is where his heart will forever be”- Ernest Hemingway

There are two kinds of airplanes, those you fly and those that fly you. You must have a distinct understanding at the very start as to who is the boss- Ernest Gann 

Aircraft- like women they respond to love and respect, but they can bite hard if you hold them even momentarily in contempt. 

Almost since the beginning of manned flight, pilots have been known to regard certain of their aircraft with undeserved attention; often the more dangerous and difficult they were to fly, the more unreasonable became the pilot’s perverse devotion. 

Is fate too strong for man’s self-will? - Sir Francis Chichester 

The only way to be happy is to do fully what you are destined for - Sir Francis Chichester 

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye - The Little Prince 

I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. 

If the good Lord invented anything better than good food, sex and flying, He kept it to Himself. 

I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty. That the reasons flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying - Amelia Earhart 

"I earn a hundred-thousand-dollars-a-minute, but you'll never know which one; the rest is for free". 

The gathering was certainly international; but first and foremost it was aviational. All these men were united by the same great bond. National differences were swept aside. The banner was the banner of aviation. – Alan Cobham- Skyways  

The Freemasonary of the Air

Nor must you forget that lure of flying, the ‘Freemasonary of the Air’. Even during the war the sporting instinct that existed between two opposing Flying Forces was proved time out of number by acts of courtesy and respect paid by each side to the enemy’s fallen. Today it is possible when flying round Europe, to land on an aerodrome, and on entering a pilots’ mess, to sit down with pilots of half a dozen nationalities. I can call to mind an occasion when I dined at Brussels with two Russians, one German, two Frenchmen, a Belgian, two Swedes, a Dane and two Englishmen. The gathering was certainly international; but first and foremost it was aviational. All these men were united by the same great bond. National differences were swept aside. Their banner was the banner of aviation.- Alan Cobham, Skyways.

“How can all of them down there, those poor souls who will soon be waking up and trudging out of their minute rectangles and inching along their little noodle highway towards whatever slots and grooves make up their everyday lives- how could they live like that, with such earnestness, if they had the faintest idea of what it was like here in this righteous zone?”- Tom Wolfe  

 The Aviator’s World

The aviator lives in a world a little different from that of the ordinary man in the street. He has a different idea and range of conception of the earth he dwells upon, for by means of aviation we are going to learn more about geography than by any other development in history. The speed of flying will make us realize how small the world is and how petty our quarrels, for aviation cares nought for frontiers, and by this quickened means of transport the races of the earth will have greater intercourse with, and knowledge of each other. -         Alan Cobham – Skyways

In The Cockpit

Nor is there a more ideal place in the world for meditation than the cockpit of a plane as you race across the sky at 70 or 100 miles an hour. If the air is clear and you are high enough from the earth not to be interested in it’s affairs, and if your motor is singing a melody of power that is one long rhythmical harmony, you and your plane seems to blow the cobwebs from your brain, and you can do more clear thinking in two hours there than you can do in two days in a crowded city.  – E.Nelson – The First World Flight.

The Wright Brothers

I have often been asked since these pioneer days, “Tell me, Brewer, who was really the originator of those two?”. In reply, I used to first say,” I think it was mostly Wilbur”, and later, when I came to know Orville better, I said, “The thing could not have been done without Orville”. Now when asked, I find I have to say, ”I don’t know”, and I feel the more I think of it that it was only the wonderful combination of these two brothers, who devoted their lives together for this common object, that made the discovery of the art of flying possible. – Griffith Brewer- Lecture before the Royal Aeronautical Society.

“Most airmen if they are honest with themselves believe in fate. They will lie about, rationalize, and deny the fact that they are not always in complete control, but in their hearts, they know this to be the truth. They insist that pilots who are killed simply made mistakes, and usually unforgivable mistakes. This apparent callousness towards the tragedies that always seem to hit the other guy is merely an airman’s defense mechanism – the wishful thinking, the whistling by-the-graveyard conviction that it only happens to somebody else.” - Frank Borman, “Count Down”.