The construction of an airplane is simple compared with the evolutionary achievement of a bird. If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
— Charles Lindbergh
There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war.
I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.
After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and the sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.
Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.
To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength.
More and more, as civilization develops, we find the primitive to be essential to us. We root into the primitive as a tree roots into the earth. If we cut off the roots, we lose the sap without which we can't progress or even survive. I don't believe our civilization can continue very long out of contact with the primitive.
I am shocked at the attitude of our American troops. They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the ordinary decencies of life.
I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.
Flying a good airplane doesn't require near as much attention as a motor car.
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.
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.
I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.
Real freedom lies in wildness, not civilization.
There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war. There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.
It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.
I would rather spend one day on Maui than 30 days in the hospital.
National polls showed that when England and France declared war on Germany, in 1939, less than 10 percent of our population favored a similar course for America.
We must learn from the sermons of Christ, the wisdom of Laotzu, the teachings of Buddha.
Why shouldn't I fly from New York to Paris? I have more than four years of aviation behind me. I've barnstormed over half of the 48 states. I've flown my mail through the worst of nights.
I've had enough publicity for 15 lives.
You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.
About forty miles away from Paris, I began to see the old trench flares they were sending up at Le Bourget. I knew then I had made it, and as I approached the field with all its lights, it was a simple matter to circle once and then pick a spot sufficiently far away from the crowd to land O.K.
We Americans are a primitive people... Americans seem to have little respect for the law or the rights of others.
I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Isn't it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.
It's almost as easy to stand up as it is to sit down.
There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.
In time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda.
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and 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?
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany.
Time is no longer endless or the horizon destitute of hope.
If I must fight, I'll fight; but I prefer not to spit at my enemy beforehand.
Civilization must be based on life. We should never forget that human life was created in and for millions of centuries, was nourished by primitive wildness. We cannot separate ourselves from this ancestral background.
We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.
Aviation constituted a new and possibly decisive element in preventing or fighting a war, and I was in a unique position to observe European aviation - especially in its military aspects.
I had four sandwiches when I left New York. I only ate one and a half during the whole trip and drank a little water. I don't suppose I had time to eat any more because, you know, it surprised me how short a distance it is to Europe.
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?
To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission.
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, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
