Plato Quotes

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.

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

Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic.

It has been said that men carry on a kind of coasting trade with religion. In the voyage of life, they profess to be in search of heaven, but take care not to venture so far in their approximations to it, as entirely to lose sight of the earth; and should their frail vessel be in danger of shipwreck, they will gladly throw their darling vices overboard, as other mariners their treasures, only to fish them up again when the storm is over.

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.

Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven. . . . My message certainly is not one of complacency. In this I agree with the doomsayers: our world needs the best efforts of all humanity to improve our lot.

Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

I imagine our first glimpse of Heaven will cause us to gasp in amazement and delight. That first gasp will likely be followed by many more as we continually encounter new sights in that endlessly wonderful place.

The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.

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.

Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples.

O the eye's light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.

And so, being in Heaven, it was easy for him to lose sight of earth.

The one who is our very Life descended into our world, and bore our death, and slew it with the abundance of His own life. Thundering, He called out to us to return to Him in heaven.

There is something about keeping Him divine that keeps Him distant, packaged, predictable. But don't do it. For heaven's sake, don't. Let Him be as human as He intended to be. Let Him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let Him in can He pull us out.

There will certainly be no lack of human pioneers when we have mastered the art of flight....Let us create vessels and sails justed to the heavenly ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes. In the meantime we shall prepare, for the brave sky-travelers, maps of the celestial bodies.

Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.

For the first time I was flying by jet propulsion. No engine vibrations. No torque and no lashing sound of the propeller. Accompanied by a whistling sound, my jet shot through the air. Later when asked what it felt like, I said, "It felt as though angels were pushing".

Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore.

I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.

The rapture will not be secret but open and manifest. Its purpose will not be to whisk the elect away from the earth for a while until Christ returns for a 'second' Second Coming. The purpose of the rapture is to allow the saints to meet Jesus in the air as He returns and be included in His entourage during His triumphal descent from Heaven. His coming in this manner will be attended by the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the end of the world.

The closer you get to heaven, the less air there is, because when you get to heaven for real, you don't need to breathe anymore.

The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven, and the more glorious that glory.