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More Quotes of Distinction...
“Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”--- Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time
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"I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."--Wilbur Wright, 1908
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“The universe is a self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial-and-error learning, participatory, interactive, non-locally interconnected and evolving system.”--Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell
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“Great pilots are made, not born.... A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end result is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience.” -- Air Vice-Marshal James Edgar “Johnnie” Johnson, RAF
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“...[S]ome CFIs will tell you that their definition of an emergency is that 767 captain climbing into a Cessna 172 for the first time in 20 years.” --Aviation writer Chip Wright in AOPA PILOT magazine.
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"The discovery that we are being visited by extraterrestrials would be one of the greatest in human history. Such a discovery would profoundly alter the perception of ourselves and our place in the universe."--Documentary Out of the Blue
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"The question itself [of UFOs] I think is legitimate. It's interesting, it's fascinating. It's mythic in scale and one of the grand questions. It's like the God question or, you know, the meaning-of-life question. It's one of those, on that scale. So you'd have to be made of wood not to be interested and, you know, have they come here? Are they up there?"--Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic Magazine
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"Think about how random things are…. For me, it required a Thursday night time slot for a medical show (ER). … There had only been two shows in 16 years —L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues— and it opened up. We had a show, and immediately everything changed. And you go, 'That has nothing to do with me.' That has to do with pure luck all the way around."—Actor George Clooney
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"Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."--Author Michael Crichton
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"I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings?"--NASA Administrator Michael Griffin
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"Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."--Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge University.
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"I have an 800-number now that I call if I get the urge to buy an airline stock. I call at 2 in the morning and I say: 'My name is Warren, and I'm an aeroholic.' And then they talk me down."--Warren Buffett
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.--George Bernard Shaw
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"Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether . . . the decisions I made made sense."--President George W. Bush
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“[Senator-elect James] Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being -- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another. When -- if ever -- Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as a "leader" who carefully calibrates the "symbolic things" he does to convey messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.--Columnist George F. Will
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"One of the challenges in the safety community is that all of the obvious stuff has been done. We are in a period now where accidents are so few and far between that they aren't really linked to each other. They are pretty random. And it is more difficult to decide where to invest our safety dollars."--John Hickey, director of the FAA's aircraft certifications services.
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President George W. Bush, at the christening of the George H. W. Bush, the Navy’s newest—and last—Nimitz-class carrier, offered this anecdote about his father's service as a naval aviator during World War II :
"Our dad would become known as one of the Navy's youngest pilots. But that wasn't his only distinction.
"While training along the Chesapeake Bay, the pilots in our dad's flight class learned about a beach across the way where young ladies liked to sunbathe. It became popular for the pilots to fly low over the beach. So one day he came in low to take a look. It just so happened to be the same day that a traveling circus had set up its tents. Dad's flyover upset an elephant, causing him to break loose and make a run throughout the town.
"He was called in for a reprimand from his commander. He puts it this way: 'I was grounded for causing an elephant stampede.' Probably the only Navy pilot in American history who can make that claim."
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“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. 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.”—Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis
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Of his childhood, Simon said his family members "...Were not very intelligent people, and I don't know why I turned into a writer.... We had eight books in the house and my mother and father bought them because four were red and four were blue."--Playwright Neil Simon
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“The tendency for politicians to claim credit for favorable news is as natural as flatulence in cows.”--Economist Robert Samuelson
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Of his childhood, Simon said his family members "...Were not very intelligent people, and I don't know why I turned into a writer.... We had eight books in the house and my mother and father bought them because four were red and four were blue."--Playwright Neil Simon
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“The tendency for politicians to claim credit for favorable news is as natural as flatulence in cows.”--Economist Robert Samuelson
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“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”--Arthur Schopenhauer
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"The last thing you want to do is save your life and kill somebody in the process."--Airshow pilot Sean Tucker talking about his recent bailout.
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"And let's get one thing straight. There's a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight." — Elrey Borge Jeppesen
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“I like to get to work early. Before my brain knows what I’m up to.”—from the comic strip Frank and Ernest by Bob thaves
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"The tendency of an event to occur varies inversely with one's preparation for it." — David Searles
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“As a World War II bomber pilot, I was always troubled by the title of a then-popular book, God Is My Co-pilot. My co-pilot was Bill Rounds of Wichita, Kansas, who was anything but godly, but he was a skillful pilot, and he helped me bring our B-24 Liberator through thirty-five combat missions over the most heavily defended targets in Europe. I give thanks to God for our survival, but somehow I could never quite picture God sitting at the controls of a bomber or squinting through a bombsight deciding which of his creatures should survive and which should die. It did not simplify matters theologically when Sam Adams, my navigator--and easily the godliest man on my ten-member crew--was killed in action early in the war. He was planning to become a clergyman at war's end.
Of course, my dear mother went to her grave believing that her prayers brought her son safely home. Maybe they did. But how could I explain that to the mother of my close friend, Eddie Kendall, who prayed with equal fervor for her son's safe return? Eddie was torn in half by a blast of shrapnel during the Battle of the Bulge--dead at age 19, during the opening days of the battle--the best baseball player and pheasant hunter I knew.”--Former Senator George McGovern
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“The smallest amount of vanity is fatal in aeroplane fighting. Self-distrust rather is the quality to which many a pilot owes his protracted existence.”— Captain Edward V. 'Eddie' Rickenbacker.
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“Shortly before their aircraft crashed into trees, the two-man flight crew of Corporate Airlines Flight 5966 were joking with each other, discussing co-workers they didn’t like and how it would be nice to eat a Philly cheese steak. The accident killed the crew and 11 of 13 passengers.” --Washington Post
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“[Joy is] an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."--C. S. Lewis
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“There is a peculiar gratification on receiving congratulations from one's squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world. It means that one has won the confidence of men who share the misgivings, the aspirations, the trials and the dangers of aeroplane fighting.”— Captain Edward V. 'Eddie' Rickenbacker
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''This movie will bring back to the forefront of people's minds the great values that the twentieth century threw away. Chivalry. Honor. Duty. Commitment. Personal courage. What the world needs now is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!'' --Douglas Gresham, artistic director of the C.S. Lewis Co. and the late author's stepson
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"Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie."-- Peggy Dowd, mother of N.Y. Times columnist, Maureen Dowd.
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“Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of fuel, to the last beat of the heart.”— Baron Manfred von Richthofen
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"The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world...we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."--Winston Churchill
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“The Moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.” — Arthur C. Clarke
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"I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored." --Albert Einstein
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“But the goal [of the space program] isn't just scientific exploration . . . it's also about extending the range of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward in time. . . . In the long run a single-planet species will not survive. We have ample evidence of that . . . [Species have] been wiped out in mass extinctions on an average of every 30 million years.--NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin
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“Remarkably, [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein was reading her statement. So her mare's-nest of inapposite words and unclear thoughts cannot be excused as symptoms of Biden's Disease, that form of logorrhea that causes victims, such as Sen. Joe Biden, to become lost on the syntactical back roads of their extemporaneous rhetoric.”--Columnist George Will
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"I released the brakes and we were rolling, slowly at first, and then there was a significant pickup of speed. . . . The airspeed indicator showed 40 knots, 50, 60. At 65 I pulled back the stick, the nose lifted, we rolled along on the main gear, and then the aircraft smoothly lifted into the air. We climbed out at 180 knots, almost twice as fast as I'd ever gone while piloting. . . . We leveled out at 12,500 feet, higher than I'd ever been as a pilot. I was in a dream."—Clyde Edgerton, from his book, SOLO.
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“The Democrats' problem is partly a lack of strong leadership. Its main spokesman on foreign policy has become Sen. Joseph Biden, a man who -- how to put this politely? -- seems more impressed with the force of his own intellect than an objective evaluation would warrant.”--David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist
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"The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin. We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have."--Eileen Collins, astronaut
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“But if intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little? Worrying too much -- if that's what happened -- resulted in the toppling of one of the planet's most murderous tyrants. Worrying too little resulted in 9/11.”--Jeff Jacoby,a syndicated columnist for The Boston Globe.)
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"The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not....Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"--Famous police oneliners.
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Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of fuel, to the last beat of the heart.--Baron Manfred Von Richthofen
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“The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not.”--Albert Einstein
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“My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it." - Buddy Hackett
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"Yes, of course. Are you really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in this universe? Millions of stars, and we're supposed to be the only living creatures? No, there are many things out there, we just don't know."--Actor Tom Cruise, when asked if he believed in aliens.
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“Another audit shows the Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million. Even worse, the Pentagon never bothered to file a refund for these fully refundable tickets. And that’s not counting the 27,000 times the Pentagon paid twice for the same airline ticket, at a total cost of $8 million. This wasted $108 million could have purchased seven Blackhawk helicopters, 17 M-1 Abrams tanks, or a large supply of additional body armor for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—Brian Reidl, Capitalism Magazine
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"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." -- Ronald Reagan
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“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is worse.”--John Stuart Mill (June 2005)
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“Also, don’t disdain fear. Fear can be your friend, as long as it is not debilitating. Like riding motorcycles or horses, you should always be a little scared of this stuff. It will make you cautious, but not timid, and cautious will make you safe. Always remember, we’re not supposed to be up there.”--Rob Dorsey, aviation writer and aerobatics guru extraordinaire. (June 2005)
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"The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange." --Philosopher and teacher Joseph Campbell (June 2005)
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“They're like oversized model airplanes. This is definitely not something you want to fly in from here to Texas. They look like coffins with wings.”--Scott Rayburn, owner of Aerospace Refinishing Inc., speaking of the 12- and 15- foot-long propeller-driven aircraft involved in the Clarence Page Airport races in Oklahoma, where an accident had just occured. (June 2005)
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"There is not a pilot who has flown the Raptor that isn't in love with it”-- Lt. Col. James Hecker, 27th Fighter Squadron commander.
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"You didn't think we give tickets to pretty women? You're right, we don't. Sign here."--Famous Police one-liners.
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“I like to fly at least once a day.”--Actor John Travolta
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"We determined that at times, pilots of these planes were unaware they had a fighter on their left wing." --Lt. Col. Bob Hehemann of NORAD
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"It is a good thing to learn caution from the misfortunes of others." — Publilius Syrus
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"With a short dash down the runway, the machine lifted into the air and was flying. It was only a flight of twelve seconds, and it was uncertain, wavy, creeping sort of flight at best; but it was a real flight at last and not a glide." — Orville Wright
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"One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try." — Sophocles
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Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump at least how high should you be?
A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.--From the original Hollwood Squares
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“My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.” - Buddy Hackett
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"What is the cause of most aviation accidents: Usually it is because someone does too much too soon, followed very quickly by too little too late." — Steve Wilson
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"This the last of human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." — Victor Frankl
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"Trouble in the air is very rare. It is hitting the ground that causes it." — Amelia Earhart
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"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." -- Ronald Reagan
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“Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.”--President George W. Bush, in his January 20, 2005 inaugural speech.
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"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, they get lost – sometimes killed. In my profession life itself depends on accuracy." — Charles Lindbergh
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“I’m with the majority of people my age who think it’s more likely that we’re going to see a flying saucer rather than a Social Security check in our lifetime.”--Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund.
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"Nobody who gets too damned relaxed builds up much flying time." — Ernest K. Gann, describing advice from a very old aviator, in The Black Watch, 1989
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“The people in Hollywood are fabulously stupid.”-- Author Michael Crichton
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"Real confidence in the air is bred only by mistakes made and recovered from at a safe altitude, in a safe ship, and seated on a good parachute." -- Rodney H. Jackson
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“Ask yourself , how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone age, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit and their abundance of compassion?
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[Because] “They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed…. They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues.”—Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, commander 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad, writing to the families of his troops.
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“An intolerance for mediocrity...is the driving force behind everything great.”--Ryan Carra, Washington Post
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"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." — William Shakespeare
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“The black wind of death is coming.”--Osama bin Laden in November 2004
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"The Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you." — attributed to Max Stanley, Northrop test pilot
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“He was very fond of small children and animals. With children he would go through various tricks, making funny noises wiht his hands and wiggling his ears. In fact, his ability to wiggle his ears was the only accomplishment of which he would boast shamelessly and which he was quite eager to show off.”--Ernst Straus of Albert Einstein
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"There is no such thing as a natural-born pilot." — Brigadier General Charles "Chuck" Yeager
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"The only politician in America I know with a man-date is Jim McGreevey."--James Carville, "Meet the Press, Nov. 14
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“It was no accident that God made the Israelites wander in the desert for 40 years before bringing them to the promised land: That was how long it would take them to unlearn the mental habits of Egyptian slavery.” --Anne Applebaum, Washington Post columnist
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"My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." --Pi Patel, in The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
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"Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly."--On a child's Superman costume.
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"We were three individuals who had drawn, in a kind of lottery, a momentous opportunity and a momentous responsibility."--Neil Armstrong
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My philosophy is just to go, go like hell. Like Teddy Roosevelt did it. Full bore.” --Senator John McCain
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“Balthazar is a good man. But until all men are like him, we must keep our swords bright and our intentions true!”--The Arab sheik to Judah Ben-Hur, from the movie Ben-Hur
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Rob Manning, who headed the Rovers´ landing team made this fantastic observation: “It looks pretty easy, but I want to remind you that we required eight thrusters to turn the vehicle, we had two cooling pumps that had to work, we had the 37 pyrotechnic devices that included two thermal batteries, eight cable cutters, three gas generators, one mortar canon and actually in this case, five or so solid rocket motors. We had four sensors, a star scanner, a sun sensor, a radar altimeter, two inertial measurement units, a descent camera, two radios, one computer and a lot of software and airbags.... [And] they worked!”
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The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it´s comprehensible.--Albert Einstein
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The best time to take action toward a dream is yesterday; the worst is tomorrow; the best compromise is today. --Alvah Simon, North to the Night, A Year in the Arctic Ice
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Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. --Goethe´s Faust
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The most beautiful thing one can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this reaction is a stranger--who no longer can pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe--is as good as dead, his eyes are closed.--Albert Einstein
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Oh Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not just yet.--Saint Augustine
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The present always contains within it the seeds of the past.... Life may seem absurd, yet...there is a divinely imposed order, however dreary, repetitive and meaningless our existence may appear to us.---From a review by Jonathan Groner of The Sea Is Never Full, by Elie Wiesel.
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It is a dog-eat-dog world, my friend, and you´re wearing "Milkbone" underwear! Apocryphal
“People cannot discover new land until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”--Andre Gide
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