Aviation Quotes

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

My grandmother was, back when they called them 'stewardesses,' a flight attendant. I actually had a ball wearing that little uniform and making sure everything was under control.

But I don't think the popularity of flying has diminished a bit.

Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding.

A Fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I have long been of the mindset that aviators are like leather jackets - when they're perfect, they give you 'instant cool.' They're the Alexa Chung of sunglasses.

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

When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.

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

In the long run sea power will be no match for air power.

We need people building companies all over the country to innovate in aviation, consumer products, education, health, cybersecurity, biotech, manufacturing, and everything in between.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

We must produce a true American motor, a true American plane.

At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us.

The U.S. government doesn't build your computers, nor do you fly aboard a U.S. government owned and operated airline. Private industry routinely takes technologies pioneered by the government and turns them into cheap, reliable and robust industries. This has happened in aviation, air mail, computers, and the Internet.

One of our concerns was the relationship between military and civil aviation… Civil aviation was not helping the defense program at all. It was all the other way around, as has been apparent pretty much ever since. This defense aid was one of the excuses for the airline subsidy

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

There are sound economic reasons for believing that a great epoch of air transportation is being born. A new industrial and commercial era is beginning with the airplane just as surely as new areas began with steamships, railroads, and automobiles…. It is truly the Age of the Air.

The helicopter appeared so reluctant to fly forward that we even considered turning the pilot's seat around and letting it fly backward.

A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.