Bill Engvall Quotes

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small.

If the Wright Brothers were alive today, Orville would have to lay off Wilbur.

All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.

If the Wright brothers hadn't put their lives on the line, we would not be flying around the world these days. So we need pioneers.

The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see the world.

To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.

I am well convinced that Aerial Navigation will form a most prominent feature in the progress of civilization

In Missouri, we built the steamships that plied the Mississippi. It was people of Missouri who believed that a human being could fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. And it was Missourians who built the capsule in which an American first orbited the earth.

It would be right to state that, with the successful flight of the XR-4 in the summer of 1942, the helicopter became a reality in the United States.

The chilly December day! two shivering bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio first felt their homemade contraption whittled out of hickory sticks, gummed together with Arnstein's bicycle cement, stretched with muslin they'd sewn on their sister's sewing machine in their own backyard on Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio, soar into the air above the dunes and the wide beach at Kitty Hawk.

The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.

There was a flight from Cleveland to New York City with just two people on board. There hasn't been two people on an airplane since the Wright brothers.

I believe the new machine of the Wrights to be the most promising attempt at flight that has yet been made.

Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.

The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation, my boy!

In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.

We can’t make a portal—” “We’ve got a flying boat,” Carter offered.

It's important that we came here, just to touch base here in this great country... When I was about 16 I came with my dad for a couple of weeks and had a great time and I've wanted to come back, it's been way too long. So, I'm very happy to be here and I want to come back longer with the rest of my family.

An automobile has about 10,000 moving parts, right? An airplane has two million, and it has to stay up in the air.

Orville Wright said to his brother, "Wilbur, you were only in the air for 12 seconds. How could my luggage be in Cleveland?"

It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.

Pack the one bag. Unpack it, pack it, unpack it, pack it: passeport, ticket, book, taxi, airport, check-in, beer, announcement, stairs, airplane, fasten seat-belt, air born, flight, rocking, sun, stars, space, hips of strolling stewardesses, read, sleep, clouds, falling engine speed, descent, circling, touch down, earth, unfasten seat-belt, stairs, airport, immunization book, visa, customs, questions, taxi, streets, houses, people, hotel, key, room, stuffiness, thirst, otherness, foreignness, loneliness, fatigue, life.