A Quote by Simon Newcomb

All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.

Simon Newcomb

Quote Topics

Artificial Attempts Aviation Dangerous Engineering Failure Human Human Life Life Only Standpoint

Quote Author

Simon Newcomb
Canadian - Mathematician
March 12, 1835 - July 11, 1909

Above all, documentary must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It cannot regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy the future. It can, and does, draw on the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In no sense is documentary a historical reconstruction and attempts to make it so are destined to failure. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations.

Paul Rotha

Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Henry Petroski

When amusement is necessary to get people to listen to the gospel there will be failure. This is not the method of Christ. To form an organization and provide all kinds of entertainment for young people, in order that they may come to the Bible classes, is to be foredoomed to failure.

G. Campbell Morgan

The only failure is the failure to learn from conscious and deliberate efforts to make things better, even if those attempts fall short of the mark.

Stewart D. Friedman

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.

Otto Lilienthal

Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.

Freeman Dyson

I've engineered my life so that my only value in this world is in my writing, which is really dangerous, because if it's a failure, then my life is meaningless.

Josh Tillman

I feel that I was made to complete things. To accomplish only a mass of beginnings and attempts would be to make a total failure of life. Perfection is the heritage with which my Creator has endowed me, and since this short life does not give completeness, I must have immortal life in which to find it.

Randolph Sinks Foster

In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young.

Mary Garden

I think 'GoodFellas' is just a perfect film. From an efficiency of storytelling standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a use of music standpoint, from a cinematography and editing standpoint - to me, it's just a perfect movie.

Derek Cianfrance

Artificial manures lead inevitably to artificial nutrition, artificial food, artificial animals and finally to artificial men and women.

Albert Howard

Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.

Edith Hamilton

To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Aviation is going to control the world economically and militarily whether we like it or not. Airpower is not merely military aviation, it is also civilian aviation and airpower is peace power.

Roscoe Turner

My message going forward is that I want to remind everyone in the aviation industry - especially those who manage aviation companies and those who regulate aviation - that we owe it to our passengers to keep learning how to do it better.