Top 398 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Aviators - Page 4

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.

The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.

Dream no small dream; it lacks magic. Dream large. Then make the dream real.

If I can create the minimum of my plans and desires there shall be no regrets.

I had never been so challenged in an airplane that I doubted the outcome.

To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.

I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.

This machine was a failure to the extent that it could not fly. In other respects it was a very important and necessary stepping stone.

It would be right to say that the helicopter's role in saving lives represents one of the most glorious pages in the history of human flight.

Politicians like to talk about incentives - for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local.

Never wait for trouble.

So let us raise a cheer ... for the insatiable spirit of Man eager for all new things! What a tale could have been written by that far off man who first saw a tree trunk roll and made a wheel and cart and harnessed in his mare and cracked his whip and drove away to disappear beyond the hill! Or that first man who made a boat and raised a sail and disappeared hull down to unknown shores!

I'm not possessed about owning the Buffalo Bills, just as I wasn't possessed about owning the Buffalo Sabres.

It's when things are going just right that you'd better be suspicious. There you are, fat as can be. The whole world is yours and you're the answer to the Wright brothers' prayers. You say to yourself, nothing can go wrong ... all my trespasses are forgiven. Best you not believe it.

I want to get to the moon. I want to go to Mars.

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

And should I not, had I but known, have flung the machine this way and that, once more to feel it live under my hand, have sported in the sky and laughed and sung, knowing that never after should I feel so free, so sure in hazard, so secure, riding the daylight in the pride of youth? No more horizons wider than Hope! No more the franchise of the sky, the freedom of the blue! No more! Farewell to wings! Down to the little earth!

I have had an experience which might perhaps be described as being shot down. At the same time, I call shot down only when one falls down. Today I got into trouble but I escaped with a whole skin.

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.

We go up just into space - space is most commonly accepted to be 100 kilometres above the earth's surface, and we go up just beyond that to about 350,000 ft.

I am grateful that my one talent, flying, was useful to my country.

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.

Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder.

It's really difficult for fanatic churchgoers to understand God can't help me. I'm the only one who can help me.

Adolf Galland said that the day we took our fighters off the bombers and put them against the German fighters, that is, went from defensive to offsensive, Germany lost the air war. I made that decision and it was my most important decision during World War II. As you can imagine, the bomber crews were upset. The fighter pilots were ecstatic.

There are pilots and there are pilots; with the good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it. If you are a fighter pilot, you have to be willing to take risks.

Having a plan enabled us to keep our hope alive. Perhaps in a similar fashion, people who are in their own personal crises - a pink slip, a foreclosure - can be reminded that no matter how dire the circumstance, or how little time you have to deal with it, further action is always possible. There's always a way out of even the tightest spot.

The excitement of automobile racing did not compare with what I knew must come with aeroplane fighting in France.

All good qualities in a child are the result of environment, while all the bad ones are the result of poor heredity on the side of the other parent

Germany may have recovered a flying saucer as early as 1939

Setting off unknown to face the unknown, against parental opposition, with no money, friends, or influence, ran it a close second. Clichés like "blazing trails," flying over "shark-infected seas," "battling with monsoons," and "forced landings amongst savage tribes" became familiar diet for breakfast. Unknown names became household words, whilst others, those of the failures, were forgotten utterly except by kith and kin.

If you have fewer teenagers having children, they could focus more on their vocational development.

Productivity and efficiency can be achieved only step by step with sustained hard work, relentless attention to details and insistence on the highest standards of quality and performance.

Aviation offered such fun as crossing the continent in planes large and small, trying the whirling rotors of an autogiro, making record flights. With these activities came opportunity to know women everywhere who shared my conviction that there is so much women can do in the modern world and should be permitted to do irrespective of their sex.

Nothing is as strong as the heart of a volunteer.

According to recognized aero technical tests, the bumblebee cannot fly because of the shape and weight of his body in relation to the total wing area. The bumblebee doesn't know this, so he goes ahead and flies anyway.

Christianity is an extreme call to a radical life following a revolutionary leader.

Retention of operational control of its air is important to the Corps' air-ground team, as air constitutes a significant part of its offensive firepower.

I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.

In nearly all cases where machines have been downed, it was during a fight which had been very short, and the successful burst of fire had occurred within the space of a minute after the beginning of actual hostilities.

We're not responsible for the bustling and hustling that may go on here. Lots of people bustle, and some hustle. But that's their business, and a very old one.

I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through - then follow through.

If we go by the National Popular Vote, we'll get more people voting.

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

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.

Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.

It is a good idea for everyone who does not have contra-indications to receive a flu shot.

A hot air balloon requires a great deal of fuel to keep it aloft, so that you can't fly it even for one day. A gas balloon, which usually uses helium, has the problem that the helium cools at night when the sun is not on it, and you have to throw ballast overboard to keep it from going to the surface.

It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it.

The sensation of dying is sweet, sensuous, placid.

To live without risk for me would be tantamount to death.

The obviously inexperienced pilot is the game the scientific air-fighter goes after, and the majority of victories are won that way. But, on the other hand, it is the novice usually who gets the famous ace by doing at some moment the unexpected thing.

The most important thing in fighting was shooting, next the various tactics in coming into a fight and last of all flying ability itself.

I would say if you do have ambitions, don't just wait around. Go out and make yourself as well-qualified as possible so you can take that rare opportunity when it comes along.

It is not a bad sport, but there's no place to go.

I do not want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country.