Lawrence Hargrave Quotes

Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes - not yet, anyhow.

Aerodynamics is mathematics for those who haven't learned to do calculus. In my case, too, for one who hasn't learned to add or multiply, at least the first time.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

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.

In my opinion, we should search for a completely different flying machine, based on other flying principles.

It is difficult to fly without wings.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.

We returned home, after these experiments, with the conviction that sailing flight was not the exclusive prerogative of birds.

I have had the feeling that a properly constructed flying-machine should be capable of being flown as a kite; and conversely, that a properly constructed kite should be capable of use as a flying-machine when driven by its own propellers.

Artificial flight may be defined as that form of aviation in which a man flies at will in any direction by means of an apparatus attached to his body, the use of which requires personal skill. Artificial flight by a single individual is the proper beginning for all species of artificial flight, as the necessary conditions can most easily be fulfilled when man flies individually.

Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle.

...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.

I lay no claim to advancing scientific data other than advancing flying knowledge. I can only say that I do it because I want to.

The life of an aviator seemed to me ideal. It involved skill. It brought adventure. It made use of the latest developments of science. Mechanical engineers were fettered to factories and drafting boards while pilots have the freedom of wind with the expanse of sky. There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God.

Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? ... You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am.

To the possible enquiry as to the probable character of a successful flying machine, the writer would answer that in his judgment two types of such machines may eventually be evolved: one, which may be termed the soaring type, and which will carry but a single operator, and another, likely to be developed somewhat later, which may be termed the journeying type, to carry several passengers, and to be provided with a motor.

I found a treehouse. I found this weird tree, out in a field, and someone had put a piece of a fence, way up in a tree. I just went up there and went to sleep for a few hours, in full cowboy regalia. And someone did take a photo. I have a photo of it, somewhere. It brought me back to when I was 12 years old, sitting in a treehouse and imagining that I was in a Western somewhere.

If I had felt then as I feel now, or as I felt a few years after I had married her, nothing could possibly have persuaded me to marry a woman who smoked. Dates, yes. Sexual adventures, yes. But to pin myself permanently inside closed quarters with a smoker? Never. Never. Never. Beauty wouldn't count, sweetness wouldn't count, suitability in every other respect wouldn't count.

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

When you think about flying, it's nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you're sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn't make any sense.

The only thing I ran into is that I am a wanderlust, as far as travel and adventure. I will go off on any given moment with the family and friends to explore the world. I go around the world once a year. I go to Africa, you know, Russia, wherever... I love it.

Reading has always been a major part of my life. It has broadened my world and taken me to places I would otherwise have never seen. Now that I am a hundred years old (this September) it still takes me to the outside world I can no longer visit.

Technological revolutions are very hard to predict. My favourite example is someone in 1850 taking care of horses as a farrier. They would have said, "Look, horses have been part of human existence for 5,000 years. We are horse people. It's permanent." But all of a sudden, the internal combustion engine comes along and, with it, oil fields and automobiles, which basically replace the horse completely. So we often have these long periods of stability and then a sudden inflection point.

....a perfect paper airplane.