A Quote by Dean Potter
In most every other country, 'body flying' more commonly known as BASE jumping is legal and looked upon as a beautiful art. Here in the United States, those of us who pursue human flight are treated as criminals and are forced to travel abroad to seek one of man's most fundamental desires, to fly free.
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For some reason, BASE jumping is misunderstood and our government forbids it and makes it illegal in most every place in the country. So I'm kind of a criminal here in the United States for pursuing the dream of flight, but everywhere else I go, every other country, I'm kind of looked up to, or fascinated with for the flying that I do.
It's one of the most fundamental desires of man, of being free and flying unhindered, and it really seems to go a lot with our founding fathers' principles of freedom.
The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother
to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this
gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
Legal aid gets a bad press. Some rail against handing taxpayers' money to criminals; others attack fat cat lawyers, while some argue that we spend far more on legal aid than other countries. But let's get some facts straight: saying that legal aid is just about criminals is wrong - most goes to people before any decision is taken on their guilt.
Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.
Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.
Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others.
But to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.
The powers, conditions, and desires that propel Mexicans and Central Americans into this country are so fundamental, so vast, that no action, legislative or other-wise, can discourage this flight.
I have called this phenomenon of stealing common knowledge and indigenous science "biopiracy" and "intellectual piracy." According to patent systems we shouldn't be able to patent what exists as "prior art." But the United States patent system is somewhat perverted. First of all, it does not treat the prior art of other societies as "prior art." Therefore anyone from the United States can travel to another country, find out about the use of a medicinal plant, or find a seed that farmers use, come back here, claim it as an invention or an innovation.
For me, the country where I feel good, where I feel in harmony with the lifestyle and fundamental values, is the United States - more than any other country.
Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!
Perhaps the country's most pressing problem is its high uninsured rate. Every other country as wealthy as the United States has figured out how to cover its entire population, generally at a much lower cost, too.
The only thing to be said for air travel is speed. It makes possible travel on a scale unimaginable before our present age. Between the ages of 20 and four-score I visited every country in Europe, all save two in Latin America, ditto in Africa, and most of Asia, not counting eight trips to Australia and 60 to the United States - all by air.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.
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