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flybywash[From here.]
"Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up."
— Walter Cunningham, 'The All-American Boys,' 1977
"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."
— Antoine de Saint Exupéry, 'Wind, Sand, and Stars,' 1939
"No matter how important a man at sea may consider himself, unless he is fundamentally worthy the sea will some day find him out."
— Felix Riesenberg
"Are you ever afraid when you fly?"
"That's a good question. Yeah. I'm always a little afraid when I fly. That's what makes me so damn good. I've seen pilots who weren't afraid of anything, who would forget about checking their instruments, who flew by instinct as though they were immortal. I've pissed on the graves of those poor bastards too. The pilot who isn't a little bit afraid always screws up and when you screw up bad in a jet, you get a corporal playing taps at the expense of the government."
— Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meecham, USMC, in Pat Conroy's book, 'The Great Santini.'
"Never fly anything that doesn't have the paint worn off the rudder pedals."
— Harry Bill
"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death I Shall Fear No Evil For I am 80,000 feet and Climbing."
— sign over the entrance to the SR-71 operating location on Kadena
"Never stop being a kid. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead."
— Richard Bach, 'Nothing by Chance,' 1963
"We contrive to make the invisible air support us, we relinquish the security of feet on the ground because flying is demanding, delightful, beautiful: because we love it. Very few of us are actually crazy, and nearly all of us manage the risks as well as we can, but we all willingly trade some of our security for the immeasurable beauty of the sky."
— Paul J. Sampson
"I can't remember the time when airplanes were not a part of my life and can't remember ever wanting anything so much as to fly one. Once I had started I had to keep flying.
"But it was not until I was seventeen that I finally got into an airplane. At that time I felt I had come to the place where I belonged in the world. The air to me was what being on the ground was to other people. When I felt nervous it pulled me together. Things could get too much for me on the ground; they never got that way in the air. Flying came into my mind like fresh air into smoked up lungs and was food in my hungry mouth and strength in my weak arms. I felt that way the first time I got into an airplane. I wasn't nervous when I first soloed. There was excitement in me, but it was the nice kind you get when you're going home after a long, long unhappy time away."
— Major Don S. Gentile, USAAF
"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."
— Leonardo da Vinci
"Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up."
— Walter Cunningham, 'The All-American Boys,' 1977
"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."
— Antoine de Saint Exupéry, 'Wind, Sand, and Stars,' 1939
"No matter how important a man at sea may consider himself, unless he is fundamentally worthy the sea will some day find him out."
— Felix Riesenberg
"Are you ever afraid when you fly?"
"That's a good question. Yeah. I'm always a little afraid when I fly. That's what makes me so damn good. I've seen pilots who weren't afraid of anything, who would forget about checking their instruments, who flew by instinct as though they were immortal. I've pissed on the graves of those poor bastards too. The pilot who isn't a little bit afraid always screws up and when you screw up bad in a jet, you get a corporal playing taps at the expense of the government."
— Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meecham, USMC, in Pat Conroy's book, 'The Great Santini.'
"Never fly anything that doesn't have the paint worn off the rudder pedals."
— Harry Bill
"Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death I Shall Fear No Evil For I am 80,000 feet and Climbing."
— sign over the entrance to the SR-71 operating location on Kadena
"Never stop being a kid. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead."
— Richard Bach, 'Nothing by Chance,' 1963
"We contrive to make the invisible air support us, we relinquish the security of feet on the ground because flying is demanding, delightful, beautiful: because we love it. Very few of us are actually crazy, and nearly all of us manage the risks as well as we can, but we all willingly trade some of our security for the immeasurable beauty of the sky."
— Paul J. Sampson
"I can't remember the time when airplanes were not a part of my life and can't remember ever wanting anything so much as to fly one. Once I had started I had to keep flying.
"But it was not until I was seventeen that I finally got into an airplane. At that time I felt I had come to the place where I belonged in the world. The air to me was what being on the ground was to other people. When I felt nervous it pulled me together. Things could get too much for me on the ground; they never got that way in the air. Flying came into my mind like fresh air into smoked up lungs and was food in my hungry mouth and strength in my weak arms. I felt that way the first time I got into an airplane. I wasn't nervous when I first soloed. There was excitement in me, but it was the nice kind you get when you're going home after a long, long unhappy time away."
— Major Don S. Gentile, USAAF
"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."
— Leonardo da Vinci
