75 Great Aviation Quotes

75 great aviation quotes to inspire and motivate aviation enthusiasts:

“A pilot who says he has never been frightened in an airplane is, I’m afraid, lying”. – Louise Thaden

“Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle”. – Igor Sikorsky

“Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description”. – Barry Goldwater

“Aviation and space travel, in particular – have always been especially captivating”. – Felix Baumgartner

“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”. – Charles Lindbergh

“Aviation is a dynamic profession. The rate of obsolescence of equipment is high and new aircraft have to be placed in inventory periodically in order to stay abreast of the requirements of modern war”. – Keith B. McCutcheon

“Aviation is fine as a sport. But as an instrument of war, it is worthless”. – Ferdinand Foch

“Aviation is for the common man. My goal is to enable everyone to fly. It shouldn’t be only for the rich”. – Tony Fernandes

“Aviation is poetry. It’s the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words”. – Jessie Redmon Fauset

“Aviation is proof that given the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible”. – Edward Vernon Richenbacher

“Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes”. – Freeman Dyson

“Aviation records don’t fall until someone is willing to mortgage the present for the future”. – Amelia Earhart

“Aviation will give new nourishment to the religious sprit of mankind. It will add airspace to those other great heighteners of the cosmic mood: the wood, the sea, the desert”. – Christian Morgenstern

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute”. – Gil Stern

“Can the magnanimous aircraft hovering at unprecedented heights in the air; ever dream of maneuvering through the crowded city streets?” – Nikhil Parekh

“Can there exist an aircraft in space without a pair of steel wings”. – Nikhil Parekh

“Every flyer who ventures across oceans to distant lands is a potential explorer; in his or her breast burns the same fire that urged adventurers of old to set forth in their sailing-ships for foreign lands”. – Jean Batten

“Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?” – Amelia Earhart

“Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don’t have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what’s going on and what you should be involved in”. – Buzz Aldrin

“Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history”. – James Dickey

“Flying is a lot like playing a musical instrument; you’re doing so many things and thinking of so many other things, all at the same time. It becomes a spiritual experience”. – Dusty Mctavish

“Flying is more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime”. – Adolf Galland

“Flying might not be all smooth sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price”. – Amelia Earhart

“Flying prevails whenever a man and his airplane are put to a test of maximum performance”. – Richard Bach

“Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery the epitome of breaking into new worlds”. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“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”. – Unknown

“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things”. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport”. – Amy Johnson

“If black boxes survive air crashes, why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?” – George Carlin

“If you are ever faced with a forced landing at night, turn on the landing lights to see the landing area. If you don’t like what you see, turn’ em back off”. – unknown

“If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible”. – Bob Hoover

“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you can use the aircraft the next day, it’s an outstanding landing”. – Chuck Yeager

“In combat flying, fancy precision aerobatic work is really not of much use. Instead, it is the rough maneuver which succeeds”. – Erich Hartmann

“In flying, you need at least two of these three to stay alive: altitude, speed or brains”. – Unknown

“In reference to flying through thunderstorms; A pilot may earn his full pay for that year in less than two minutes. At the time of incident he would gladly return the entire amount for the privilege of being elsewhere”. – Ernest K. Gann

“In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose”. – unknown

“Learning to fly an airplane taught me a way of thinking, an approach to problem-solving that was applicable and effective. Pilots are very methodical and meticulous, and artists tend not to be”. – Chris Carter

“Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death”. – Alexander Chase

“Man must rise above the Earth to the top of the atmosphere and beyond for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives”. – Socrates

“Mistakes are inevitable in aviation, especially when one is still learning new things. The trick is to not make the mistake that will kill you”. – Stephen Coonts

“Never quit. Never give up. Fly it to the end”. – Chuck Aaron

“Pilots are a rare kind of human. They leave the ordinary surface of the word, to purify their soul in the sky, and they come down to earth, only after receiving the communion of the infinite”. – Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra

“Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying”. – Neil Armstrong

“Sometimes, flying feels too God-like to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see”. – Charles A. Lindbergh

“Sports, entertainment and aviation are three of the most exciting professions in the world; you are dealing with the same magnitude”. – John Travolta

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air”. – Wilbur Wright

“The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul”. – unknown

“The exhilaration of flying is too keen, the pleasure too great, for it to be neglected as a sport”. – Orville Wright

“The good thing about flying solo is it’s never boring”. – Steve Fossett

“The highest art form of all is a human being in control of himself and his airplane in flight, urging the spirit of a machine to match his own”. – Richard Bach

“The only characteristic all airliners share is that upon proper urging they are normally capable of leaving the earth’s surface”. – Ernest K. Gann

“The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets”. – Al McGuire

“There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are”. – unknown

“To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home”. – Jerry Crawford

“Until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you’ll fly”. – unknown

“What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century”. – Bertrand Piccard

“When I fly in the aircraft at unsurpassable heights from ground, the flight steward serves tall beer mugs of juice, I feel like floating in blue air of the bare sky, with my body strapped firmly to chords of parachute”. – Nikhil Parekh

“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 DaVinci

“Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin”. – K.O. Eckland

“You’ve never been lost until you’ve been lost at Mach 3”. – Paul F. Crickmore

“You haven’t seen a tree until you have seen its shadow from the sky”. – Amelia Earhart

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the aircraft take off against the wind, not with it”. – Henry Ford

“The pilot who teaches himself has a fool for a student”. – unknown

“The fundamental magic of flying, a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes of speed, accessibility, and convenience and will not change as they change”. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are”. – Felix Baumgartner

“More than anything else, the sensation of flying is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost. If you can conceive of such a combination”. – Wilbur Wright

“In the wings of the overwhelmingly zipping aircraft, I ecstatically felt as if I was being spell bindingly devoured, by a majestically volatile fervor to gallop resurgently, throughout the tenure of my diminutively impoverished life”. – Nikhil Parekh

“In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It’s really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think”. – Dennis Quaid

“If an airplane is still in one piece, don’t cheat on it; ride the bastard down”. – Ernest K. Gann

“Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it”. – Unknown

“Fly and you will catch the swallow”. – James Howell

“Don’t be a show-off. Never be too proud to turn back. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots”. – Unknown

“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”. – Charles Lindbergh

“Aviation is going to control the world economically and militarily whether we like it or not. Airpower is not merely military aviation, it is also civilian aviation and airpower is peace power”. – Roscoe Turner

“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”. – Charles Lindbergh