Best 134 quotes of Charles Lindbergh on MyQuotes

A certain amount of danger is essential to the quality of life.

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.

After reading ... accounts ... of minor accidents of light, it is little wonder that the average man would far rather watch someone else fly and read of the narrow escapes from death when some pilot has had a forced landing or a blowout, than to ride himself. Even in the postwar days of now obsolete equipment, nearly all of the serious accidents were caused by inexperienced pilots who where then allowed to fly or attempt to fly-without license or restrictions about anything they could coax into the air.

A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them?

Air power is new to all our countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it calls for readjustment everywhere.

All mentally well-balanced persons know that we are not governed by the true principals of social justice when we make the main aim of our social existence the gaining of money.

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?

And if at times you renounce experience and mind's heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space.

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?

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

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

At the end of the first half-century of engine-driven flight, we are confronted with the stark fact that the historical significance of aircraft has been primarily military and destructive.

Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western European civilization.

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.

But accuracy means something to me. It's vital to my sense of values. I've learned not to trust people who are inaccurate. Every aviator knows that if mechanics are inaccurate. aircraft crash.

By day, or on a cloudless night, a pilot may drink the wine of the gods, but it has an earthly taste; he's a god of the earth, like one of the Grecian deities who lives on worldly mountains and descended for intercourse with men. But at night, over a stratus layer, all sense of the planet may disappear. You know that down below, beneath that heavenly blanket is the earth, factual and hard. But it's an intellectual knowledge; it's a knowledge tucked away in the mind; not a feeling that penetrates the body.

Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses.

Decades spent in contact with science and its vehicles have directed my mind and senses to areas beyond their reach. I now see scientific accomplishments as a path, not an end; a path leading to and disappearing in mystery.

Democracy can only spring from within a nation itself, only from the hearts and minds of its people.

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

God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?

History has recorded nothing so dramatic in design, nor so skillfully manipulated, as this attempt to create the National Reserve Association, or the Federal Reserve.

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?

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.

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.

I believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead.

I can't get used to the ease with which one covers the world today. It's no longer an effort--Pole--equator--oceans--continents--it's just a question of which way you point the nose of your plane. The pure joy of flight as an art has given way to the pure efficiency of flight as a science.... Science is insulating man from life -- separating his mind from his senses. The worst of it is that it soon anaesthetizes his senses so that he doesn't know what he's missing.

Ideas are like seeds, apparently insignificant when first held in the hand. Once firmly planted, they can grow and flower into almost anything at all, a cornstalk, or a giant redwood, or a flight across the ocean. Whatever a man imagines, he can achieve.

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.

I don't believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished if we don't take any chances at all.

I don't believe in taking unnecessary risks, but a life without risk isn't worth living.

If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

If I were entering adulthood now instead of in the environment of fifty years ago, I would choose a career that kept me in touch with nature more than science. ... Too few natural areas remain; both by intent and by indifference we have insulated ourselves from the wilderness that produced us.

If we can combine our knowledge of science with the wisdom of wildness, if we can nurture civilization through roots in the primitive, man's potentialities appear to be unbounded.

If we can combine our knowledge of science with the wisdom of wildness, if we can nurture civilization through roots in the primitive, man's potentialities appear to be unbounded, Through this evolving awareness, and his awareness of that awareness, he can emerge with the miraculous-to which we can attach what better name than 'God'? And in this merging, as long sensed by intuition but still only vaguely perceived by rationality, experience may travel without need for accompanying life.

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

I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

I hope you either take up parachute jumping or stay out of single motored airplanes at night.

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?

I know there is infinity beyond ourselves. I wonder if there is infinity within.

I learned that danger is relative, and the inexperience can be a magnifying glass.

I may be flying a complicated airplane, rushing through space, but in this cabin I'm surrounded by simplicity and thoughts set free of time. How detached the intimate things around me seem from the great world down below. How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. That ground - seconds away - thousands of miles away. This air, stirring mildly around me. That air, rushing by with the speed of a tornado, an inch beyond. These minute details in my cockpit. The grandeur of the world outside. The nearness of death. The longness of life.

I'm not bound to be in aviation at all. I'm here only because I love the sky and flying more than anything else on earth. Of course there's danger; but a certain amount of danger is essential to the quality of life. I don't believe in taking foolish chances' but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all.

In a time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda.

Individuals are custodians of the life stream -- temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams.

In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.

Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few very far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.

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

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life.