Charles Lindbergh Quotes
By day, or on a cloudless night, a pilot may drink the wine of the gods, but it has an earthly taste; he's a god of the earth, like one of the Grecian deities who lives on worldly mountains and descended for intercourse with men. But at night, over a stratus layer, all sense of the planet may disappear. You know that down below, beneath that heavenly blanket is the earth, factual and hard. But it's an intellectual knowledge; it's a knowledge tucked away in the mind; not a feeling that penetrates the body.
Lindbergh, Charles A. The Spirit of St. Louis. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953, p. 338.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed Slim, Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle, was an American aviator, author, inventor, military officer, explorer, and social activist. In 1927, at the age of 25, Lindbergh emerged from the virtual obscurity of a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo nonstop flight from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France. He flew the distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles (5,800 km) in a single-seat, single-engine, purpose-built Ryan monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh was the 19th person to make a Transatlantic flight, the first being the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown from Newfoundland in 1919, but Lindbergh's flight was almost twice the distance. The record-setting flight took 33 1⁄2 hours. Lindbergh, a U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve officer, was also awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his historic exploit. Politically, the National Hero became an active fascist supporter of Mussolini and Adolph Hitler who awarded him a Medal for Supporting Fascism, Anti-Semitism and advocating for America to allow Hitler to conquer German and the rest of Europe. After WWII he was in disgrace.