Charles Lindbergh Quotes - Page 4

Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.

I believe that for permanent survival, man must balance science with other qualities of life, qualities of body and spirit as well as those of mind - qualities he cannot develop when he lets mechanics and luxury insulate him too greatly from the earth to which he was born.

Our emphasis on science has resulted in an alarming rise in world populations, the demand and ever-increasing emphasis of science to improve their standards and maintain their vigor. I have been forced to the conclusion that an over-emphasis of science weakens character and upsets life's essential balance.

At first you can stand the spotlight in your eyes. Then it blinds you. Others can see you, but you cannot see them.

After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.

I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?

As civilization advances, man grows unconscious of the primitive elements of life; he is separated from them by his perfection of material techniques.

It is about a period in aviation which is now gone, but which was probably more interesting than any the future will bring. As time passes, the perfection of machinery tends to insulate man from contact with the elements in which he lives. The 'stratosphere' planes of the future will cross the ocean without any sense of the water below. Like a train tunneling through a mountain, they will be aloof from both the problems and the beauty of the earth's surface.

Why does one want to walk wings? Why force one's body from a plane to make a parachute jump? Why should man want to fly at all? People often ask these questions. But what civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it? Some answer the attainment of knowledge. Some say wealth, or power, is sufficient cause. I believe the risks I take are justified y the sheer love of the life I lead.

Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life.

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.

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.

Alone? Is he alone at whose right side rides Courage, with Skill within the cockpit and faith upon the left? Does solitude surround the brave when Adventure leads the way and Ambition reads the dials? Is there no company with him, for whom the air is cleft by Daring and the darkness made light by Emprise?

It is always easier to deal in truth and honesty and follow these to their legitimate ends, than it is to construct and adjust a false superstructure upon a false base.

What freedom lies in flying, what Godlike power it gives to men . . . I lose all consciousness in this strong unmortal space crowded with beauty, pierced with danger.

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.

I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.

The improvement of our way of life is more important than the spreading of it. If we make it satisfactory enough, it will spread automatically. If we do not, no strength of arms can permanently oppose it.

[I] grew up as a disciple of science. I know its fascination. I have felt the godlike power man derives from his machines.

I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.

The essence of life, I concluded, did not lie in the material. It penetrated, but was not bound to, the physical world of science.

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?

I live only in the moment in this strange unmortal space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger.

Wind, weather, power, load - gradually these elements stop churning in my mind. It's less a decision of logic than a feeling, the kind of feeling that comes when you gauge the distance to be jumped between two stones across a brook. Something within you disengages itself from your body and travels ahead with your vision to make the test. You can feel it try the jump as you stand looking. Then uncertainty gives way to the conviction that it can or can't be done.