Quotes about airplane

A collection of quotes on the topic of airplane, likeness, doing, use.

Quotes about airplane

“Get going. Move forward. Aim high. Plan for a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump: How to Get Rich (2004), p. 74
2000s

Love, Hope, Change

“Successive technological revolutions have immeasurably widened the psychological gap between generations. With some reason, perhaps, the man of the age of electricity and of the airplane feels himself removed from his masters.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

The Historian's Craft, pg.36

Age, Feeling, Success

“But remember this, Japanese boy… airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”

Hayao Miyazaki The Wind Rises

Source: The Wind Rises

Money, War, Beauty, Dreams

“Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines?”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Ch III : The Tool
Variant translation of: Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
Ch. III: L'Avion 
It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Context: Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

“See the nigger fly the airplane!”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Flying

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

Neil Young book Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Source: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Men, World, Faith, Travel

“Harry Dresden: There was a sound of impact, a raspy, dry scream, and the vampire went down hard. It lay on the ground like a butterfly pinned to a card, arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Its chest and collarbone had been crushed. By an entire frozen turkey. A twenty-pounder. The plucked bird must have fallen from an airplane overhead, doubtlessly manipulated by the curse. By the time it got to the ground, the turkey had already reached its terminal velocity, and was still hard as a brick. The drumsticks poked up above the vampire's crushed chest, their ends wrapped in red tinfoil. The vampire gasped and writhed a little more. The timer popped out of the turkey. Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils."”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, Blood Rites (2004)

Bird, Silence, Time, Night

“I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven’t been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife — I didn’t put up for that stuff just to come in second.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

To supporters at a fund-raising party at Jon Bon Jovi's mansion in Duryea, Pennsylvania, (5 September 2008) "Obama: 'I Don't Believe in Coming in Second'" by Jeff Zeleny (6 September 2008) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/obama-i-dont-believe-in-coming-in-second/ 2008

Food, Hope, Guy, Game

“How the Ganges water reaches the various planets from the top of the universe is explained herein. Celestial airplanes carry the water from the planets of the sages to other planets. So-called advanced scientists of the modern age are trying to go to the higher planets, but at the same time they are experiencing a power shortage on earth. If they were actually capable scientists, they could personally go by airplane to other planets, but this they are unable to do. Having now given up their Moon excursions, they are attempting to go to other planets, but without success.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 5, Chapter 17, verse 4, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/5/17/4 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Age, Universe, Water, Time

“Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Children

“If I knew I was going to die at a specific moment in the future, it would be nice to be able to control what song I was listening to; this is why I always bring my iPod on airplanes.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Future

“If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuff?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Box

“That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.”

Tracy Kidder (1945) writer

Source: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World

People, Feeling, Help

“Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings.”

J. Maarten Troost (1969) American writer

Source: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

Travel, Flying

“There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Source: Fear of Flying

“She stared at me. "Fly,; ole, in an airplane, which you were warned never to do lest Zeus strike you out of the sky, AND carrying a weapon that has more destructive power than a nuclear bomb?"
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty much exactly like that.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Flying

“Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Way, Travel, Photo, Nature

“Once I pulled a job, I was so stupid. I picked a guy's pocket on an airplane and made a run for it.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Stupidity, Guy

“I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Life, World, Training

“When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it….”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Motivational, Inspirational, Attitude, Deep

“Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Life

“I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balance.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Flying

“Ah is the shortest of human cries, Oh the longest. Man is born in an Ah and dies in an Oh, for birth is immediate and death is like an airplane taking off.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Death, Birth

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

Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) British writer

Quoted in Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes, and Brilliant Remarks By Karen Weekes, p. 41

“Instead of buying airplanes and playing around like some of our competitors, we've rolled almost everything back into the company.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Comment to reporters during the IBM PC launch (1981), interpreted as a jab at Gary Kildall
1980s

“What about the people that couldn't get out?! Someday it's gonna happen to you, Chertoff! … You won't have a car, and you won't have a government airplane, and you won't have a cell phone, and you won't have a weapon! … Blaming the victim… You filthy pig! You filthy, good-for-nothing Bush Crime Family member! … Oh, these people just make me furious!”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

http://server7.whiterosesociety.org/content/malloy/MalloyShow-(06-09-2005).mp3
reacting to Michael Chertoff talking about people that couldn't leave New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina.
On Hurricane Katrina

People, Family, Cars

“Mr. President, you're entitled as a president to your own airplane, and to your own house, but not to your own facts. I'm not going to cut education funding. I don't have any plan to cut education funding.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Presidential debate, , * 2012-10-03
2012 presidential debate: President Obama and Mitt Romney’s remarks in Denver on Oct. 3
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012-presidential-debate-president-obama-and-mitt-romneys-remarks-in-denver-on-oct-3-running-transcript/2012/10/03/24d6eb6e-0d91-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story_4.html
2012-10-04, viewable at [2012-10-03, Special Programming : Mitt Romney zingers at first presidential debate, CNN, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PvpBLQXEJg, 2012-10-04]
in response to President Obama's assertion, "His running mate, Congressman Ryan, put forward a budget... it wasn't very detailed (this seems to be a trend), but what it did do, if you extrapolated how much money we're talking about, you'd look at cutting the education budget up to 20%."
possibly paraphrasing "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.", attributed to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
2012

Education, Housing

“I've never made a flight in an airplane, and I don't know that I'm particularly anxious to. I would, though, like to take a trip in a dirigible. Bring one out here some time, won't you, Doctor Eckener, and give me a ride?”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Raymond J. Brown. " Henry Ford Says, 'There Is Always Room for More' https://books.google.nl/books?id=rCkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37," in: Popular Science, Vol. 106, nr. 2 (Feb 1925), p. 37

Time

“Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He'll go to the opening of a market to receive an award. He'd get an award from Thom McCan for wearing their shoes. It's pathetic. It's a bottomless pit. A barrel that has no floor. He must be a man who has an ever-crumbling estimation of himself. He's constantly filling himself up. He's like a junkie – an applause junkie. What happens to those people when they can't get up and do their shtick, God only knows. Bob Hope, Christ, instead of growing old gracefully or doing something with his money, be helpful, all he does is he has an anniversary with the President looking on. It's sad. He gets on an airplane every two minutes always going someplace. It didn't bother him at all to work the Vietnam War. Oh, he took that in his stride. He did his World War II and Korean War act. "Our boys" and all that. He’s a pathetic guy.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Money, God, War, People

“A few years ago I got a phone call from a marketing executive who wanted to light up the Moon with the logo of her company. She wanted to know how she might proceed. After slamming down the phone, I called her back and politely explained why it was a bad idea. Other corporate executives have asked me how to put into orbit mile-wide luminous banners with catchy slogans written across them, much like the skywriting or flag-dragging airplanes you see at sports events or over the ocean from a crowded beach. I always threaten to send the light police after them.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Let There Be Dark, Natural History Magazine, October 2002, 2018-24-03 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2002/10/01/let-there-be-dark, 2000s

Idea, Sport, Light

“The information about an Azeri military airplane entering the territory of the Armenian air border does not correspond with reality. The Armenian anti air defense system would not allow any country to enter the border line of the RA without permission. Armenia has one of the most modern technologies when it comes to the air military aspect in the region, and Azeri airplanes became more active in recent days due to general military exercises carried out by the Azeri side. They do not violate our border but are conducting maneuvers. Azerbaijan is aware that Armenia possesses the best anti-aircraft system in the region. No one can violate our border. Our military will perfectly perform the task they are charged with.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in article "Azeri jet didn’t violate Armenian border." panarmenian.net [February 15, 2008]

Exercises, Reality, Country

“I take great pride in my literary works. Journalism is much faster. I'm not embarrassed by my journalism. I consider it to be like sketches, like an artist's sketch. I use it later in other writing. But I don't pretend that it has high literary merit either. I can do an essay pretty fast. I do them on airplanes, I do them at hotels, I do them at bus stops sometimes. I've written very good things on the go.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

“I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Press conference http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-30-questions-usat_x.htm, May 16, 2002.

People, World, Thinking

“An object in OOA represents a single typical but unspecified instance of something in the real world - any airplane, I don't care which one, as long as it is typical. The object-oriented analyst distinguishes this concept from that of a specified instance: Airplane number N2713A, Air Force One, or The Spirit of St. Louis, for example.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Source: Object-Oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling the World In Data (1988), p. 12.

World

“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, that's not cowardly. Stupid maybe, but not cowardly.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Politically Incorrect (17 September 2001); this statement created controversies which resulted in this series being cancelled.

Stupidity

“There have always been two aspects to my work: formal innovation and strong content. That goes for Steve’s tape pieces as well. To make a work together, we had to be engaged by the subject matter, and we shared an interest in technology as it has advanced. Looking back at the Hindenburg and Bikini Atoll, and forward in “Dolly” to new technologies, was a way of rethinking and understanding the soup in which we swim. We call this a theater of ideas, but its success as a work depends on the strength of the video and the music.
“Hindenburg” itself begins with the crash of the zeppelin in 1937 and ends with a view of its burnt-up carcass on the landing field in Lakehurst, New Jersey, taken from an airplane. What interested us here in viewing the archival material and listening to recordings of the period was the overwhelming conviction that technology was the sure way to progress. Naturally, after the atom bomb, a darker view of progress began to appear.”

Beryl Korot (1945) American artist

Beryl Korot, in: " Steve Reich and Beryl Korot by Julia Wolfe http://bombmagazine.org/article/2521/steve-reich-and-beryl-korot," BOMB 81, Fall 2002

Music, Way, Idea, Understanding

“She [Isa's mother] called up Lufthansa and said, 'I have this daughter, you see, and she needs airplane windows,' she said. That's how she did it.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

Isa Genzken's mother, who was in her 90s, helped her in obtaining a section of jetliner window panels for an artwork Isa wanted to make: a series of cut-out airplane windows
after 2010, No, It Isn't Supposed to Be Easy' (2013)

Daughters

“I was told that faith is trust… I was told I would not step into an airplane unless I had faith that it would land safely. That doesn’t make sense because I know the plane exists… I know something about the safety ratings for commuting on an aircraft and I know that I can check my sources to find out they should be fairly reliable. But how could I be expected to trust things which can’t be verified and which are told to me by people which, frankly, can’t be trusted? I can’t trust the teacher, the preacher, or even the President, which when I was a boy was Richard Nixon. And maybe that was why I never recognized any authority as being unquestionable and that includes the people who wrote all the world’s religious tomes while claiming divine inspiration from a host of gods who cannot all exist at the same time.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Faith is not a virtue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDal8b6-X5o (June 20, 2012)

God, People, World, Faith

“Look, friend, I'm really not interested in all of that, really. See I consider myself damned lucky to have been able to land my airplane at this emergency strip in one piece.”

Daniel James Jr. (1920–1978) United States general

As quoted in The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in The Military (1998), by Gerald Astor, De Capo Press, pp. 440–443

“I recently published a book about movies I hated, and people have been asking me which reviews are harder to write — those about great movies, or those about terrible ones. The answer is neither. The most unreviewable movies are those belonging to the spoof genre — movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun and all the countless spin-offs and retreads of the same basic idea… the bottom line in reviewing a movie like this is, does it work? Is it funny? Yes, it is. Not funny with the shocking impact of Airplane! which had the advantage of breaking new ground. But also not a tired wheeze like some of the lesser and later Leslie Nielsen films. To get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises, and if you are, Scary Movie delivers the goods.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scary-movie-2000 of Scary Movie (7 July 2000) Reviews, Three star reviews

Money, Hate, People, Books

“Against reason, I thought that the next swell would be it: another rogue wave would roll me again... At that moment, a noise from above caught my attention. And I looked up just in time to see a gigantic white airplane fly by.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 176

Time, Flying

“And the music came back with the carnival, the music you've heard as far back as you can remember, ever since you were little, that's always playing somewhere, in some corner of the city, in little country towns, wherever poor people go and sit at the end of the week to figure out what's become of them, sometimes here, sometimes there, from season to season, it tinkles and grinds out the tunes that rich people danced to the year before. It's the mechanical music that floats down from the wooden horses, from the cars that aren't cars anymore, from the railways that aren't at all scenic, from the platform under the wrestler who hasn't any muscles and doesn't come from Marseille, from the beardless lady, the magician who's a butter-fingered jerk, the organ that's not made of gold, the shooting gallery with the empty eggs. It's the carnival made to delude the weekend crowd. We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at the carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joy of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud…taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldier too, and the town hall with its flag. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

27
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Hunger, War, People, Music

“Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Les avions sont des jouets intéressants mais n'ont aucune utilité militaire
Said in 1911 as quoted Time : A Traveler's Guide (1998) by Clifford A. Pickover, p. 249

“Forgoing privacy in a quest for absolute safety is as harmful to a healthy psyche and life of an individual as it is to a healthy political culture. For the individual, safety first means a life of paralysis and fear, never entering a car or airplane, never engaging in an activity that entails risk, never weighing quality of life over quantity, and paying any price to avoid danger. […] A population, a country that venerates physical safety above all other values will ultimately give up it’s liberty and sanction any power seized by authority in exchange for the promise, no matter how illusory, of total security. However, absolute safety is itself chimeric, pursued but never obtained. The pursuit degrades those who engage in it as well as any nation that comes to be defined by it.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 208.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Life, Fear, Cars, Country

“Let's just ruin all the movies about pterosaurs: they could soar like airplanes, but they couldn't hover like hummingbirds. They couldn't carry things in their feet either, they couldn't perch on tree branches like birds, they didn't look like "bird-monsters", and they didn't look like "lizard-bats". They didn't have four-fingered wings like bats; their wings were based on an elongated pinky finger. The only thing bat-like about them was the way they walked; on all fours. So what are the possibilities for fluffy pterosaurs? We know they were a very diverse and almost certainly colorful group. They looked like a wide range of things, from fluttering bats to darting falcons. Some had powerful shell-crushing jaws and some had ridiculous crests, and some were quite huge. For decades, we were told that Pteranodon was the biggest animal that ever flew, then they discovered Ornithocheirus, then Quetzalcoatlus, then Hatzegopteryx (an apex predator)… These were capable killers of even human-sized prey, with a skull larger than that of even the biggest carnosaurs.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Color, Way, Bird, Tree

“Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies - she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/778237485402980352 (20 September 2016), quoted in "Trump blasts Clinton for 'copying' his airplane rallies" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-blasts-clinton-for-copying-his-airplane-rallies/article/2602310 by Kelly Cohen, Washington Examiner (20 September 2016) 2010s, 2016, September

People

“Well, no question decisions have made things unstable. But the question is can we succeed. And I believe we can. Listen, I'd like to see stability and a unified Iraq. A young democracy will provide the stability we look for. I will tell you that if we just isolate ourselves from the Middle East and hope for the best, we will not address the conditions that had led young suiciders to get on airplanes to come and attack us in the first place.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

60 Minutes interview http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/14/60minutes/main2359119.shtml in response to the question “But wasn't it your administration that created the instability in Iraq?” (January 14, 2007) 2000s, 2007

Hope, Democracy, Question, Decision

“On the phone with his wife when the plane he was on stopped after hitting a deer.
Engvall: When we landed on the runway, we hit a deer with our airplane. You can't make this up. And it killed the deer, it wrecked the engine. We had to evacuate the plane. But the plane was so small it didn't have slides. The flight attendant said "Just step out." So they put us in a van and they're busing us back to the terminal and I'm laughing at this point because this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I got back to the terminal, I called my wife. I said "Baby, you're not gonna believe this. We just hit a deer with our airplane". There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by…
Gail: Oh my God! Were you on the ground?

Engvall: Nope, Santa was making one last run! Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign: Live! (2004)
Here's Your Sign

Life, God, Baby

“My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave.”

Burt Reynolds (1936–2018) American actor, director and producer.

Source: Briton Hadden, ‎Henry Robinson Luce (1972). Time, Vol. 100. p. 43

“God's irony: that in order to fight and defeat the threat of terrorism, we shall have to be clear about the principle of justice that allows us to understand what is evil in terrorism. And that principle of justice is the claim of justice that is inherent in every innocent human life. But if that claim was there in the Twin Towers, if it was there on the airplanes that those terrorists attacked, you explain to me why it is not there in the womb!”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Speech at Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, Utah, September 24, 2002. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/02_09_24utah.htm. 2002

Life, God, Justice, Understanding

“Asimov: Battlestar Galactica for instance, started off with twenty to thirty minutes of space battles which looked exactly like air battles in World War I. You could swear that the space ships were surrounded by air the way the maneuvered. One felt it was unworthy.
SWA Magazine: The Vipers in Battlestar Galactica look like jets. Is this a realistic design for the future?
Asimov: It is as if people in the 1880s were writing fantasy stories about airplanes of the future and they had the pilots lean back at the wheel and yell "whoa" and the airplane came to a halt in mid-air.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

War, People, World, Way

“I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower. The TV was obviously on. I used to fly myself and I said, "There's one terrible pilot."”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Quoted in Elisabeth Bumiller (2001-12-05) "A Nation Challenged: The President" New York Times. Colloquial English allows Bush's remark to be interpreted as "I saw that an airplane had hit the tower."
2000s, 2001

Waiting, Flying

“It was an example of the terrible innocence of men who are superb in their own fields. Einstein had some grotesque political opinions. Jack Parr knew how we should get rid of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Vonnegut keeps losing airplane tickets.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1966)

Men

“Yes ssjjure, it is Fffriesland, seen from an airplane.”

Gerrit Benner (1897–1981) Dutch painter

Jawel, het is Ffffriesland, gezien uit een vliegmasjien. Quote of Gerrit Benner (early 1950's); as cited in 'Gerrit Benner geboeid door Friese wolkenluchten', Sytse Singelsma http://www.fryslan1.frl/2015/03/04/nieuwe-pagina/, 4 March 2015 Benner's stammering response, when young inhabitants of Leeuwarden criticized him on painting their Friesland as just one simple green surface 1950 - 1980

“I was 8 or 9 when I had a sighting of a disk-shaped craft that convinced me that it was certainly not an airplane or anything conventional.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Source: Quoted in: Researcher's Close Encounters Convince Him Of Extraterrestrials The Virginian-Pilot, Roy A. Bahls, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=VP&p_theme=vp&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAFF84CB5EACDC1&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM (22 March 1995)

“From the beginning I had wanted to do something with my flying. Just being able to go up in the air and come down at the same spot wasn't very exciting. Airplanes are for going places quickly, safely and comfortably. I don't know why, but my longing had always been to go to the West Coast. First, because I had never been there, and then for various reasons you fly over all sorts of country on the way, and it is the best way to see the country.”

Eddie August Schneider (1911–1940) American aviator

[I Break a Record and have a Swell Time Besides, Flying magazine, http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Eddie_August_Schneider_October_1931_Flying_magazine_page_1_of_5.png, October 1, 1930, Eddie August Schneider]

Way, Flying, Country

“Lulu made most of his telephone calls. He made this one himself, on a special line that didn't pass through her desk. It went straight from his office to the War Department. Men checked twice a day to make sure the damnyankees didn't tap it. It rang only once before the Chief of the General Staff picked it up. "Forrest speaking." "Featherston," Jake said, and then, "Blackbeard." He hung up. There. It was done. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen would happen… starting tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning. Summer had just come in. Jake worked through the rest of June 21. He ate supper, then went right on working through the night. Lulu brought him cup after cup of coffee. After a while, yawning, she went home to bed. He worked on, behind blackout curtains that kept light from leaking out of the Gray House and showing where it was from the air. June 21 passed through to June 22. All that coffee made Jake's eart thud and soured his stomach. He gulped a Bromo-Seltzer and went on. At a quarter past three, the drone of airplane engines and the thunder of distant artillery- not distant enough; damn those Yankee robbers!”

Harry Turtledove book American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

made him whoop for sheer glee. He'd waited so long. Now his day was here.
Source: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003), p. 534.

Men, War, Home, Coffee

“The question of whether a computer is playing chess, or doing long division, or translating Chinese, is like the question of whether robots can murder or airplanes can fly -- or people; after all, the "flight" of the Olympic long jump champion is only an order of magnitude short of that of the chicken champion (so I'm told). These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Powers and Prospects, 1996 https://chomsky.info/prospects01/. Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

People, Question, Decision, Flying

“The biggest misfortune in human history is the invention of the combustion engine. Cars and airplanes diminish the world, rob it of all its diversity. Young men who meet me want to know how they could do what I've done. But all they can be is tourists now.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Book Report by David Streitfeld https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1999/06/06/book-report/664d575b-8615-4d17-9275-dd7eb11de8bd/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.213c896c1ac0. The Washington Post. 6 June 1999.

Men, World, Cars, History

“The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), September 25, 2001. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/01_09_25bampac.htm. 2009

Truth, Soul, Idea, Heart

Sally Shlaer (1938–1998) American computer scientist

Source: Object-Oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling the World In Data (1988), p. 12

World

“I wouldn't enter an airplane flown by a quota pilot or accept to be operated by a quota doctor.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Referring to the recent adoption of racial and socioeconomic affirmative action in universities. Interview to the program CQC on Band. Bolsonaro diz na TV que seus filhos não 'correm risco' de namorar negras ou virar gays porque foram 'muito bem educados' https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/bolsonaro-diz-na-tv-que-seus-filhos-nao-correm-risco-de-namorar-negras-ou-virar-gays-porque-foram-muito-bem-educados-2804755; O Globo (29 March 2011).

“I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed “airport towers” out of bamboo and “headphones” out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2006, Human Events interview (2006)

Religion, Support, Appearance, Waiting

“By this I refer to the fact that at the same time several people may each possess some portion of the rights to use the land. A may possess the right to grow wheat on it. B may possess the right to walk across it. C may possess the right to dump ashes and smoke on it. D may possess the right to fly an airplane over it. E may have the right to subject it to vibrations consequent to the use of some neighboring equipment. And each of these rights may be transferable. In sum, private property rights to various partitioned uses of land are "owned" by different persons.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Source: Economic Forces at Work, 1977, p. 132-133

People, Time, Personality, Flying

“Cars used to have such dashing shapes, like airplanes, back when gas was cheap, twenty-five cents a gallon.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

Cars

“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

CBS News http://www.gop.com/news/read.aspx?ID=4386, November 28, 2003.

People, Thinking

“Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices -- secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, A Great People Has Been Moved to Defend a Great Nation (September 2001)

Life, Women, Way, Moms

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Men, People, Penalty

“I was on an airplane last year when a talk show began playing on the TVs. I decided to start narrating for the people, which is a really great game if you're ever bored enough. I realized a time will probably come when television will watch us if we're watching it, if that hasn't already happened, figuratively or literally. It sounded like some sort of pseudo-Big Brother nightmare, so I wrote it down.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

His influence on writing the song Talk Shows on Mute

People, Game, Time

“On the floor Tien Pao had held Beauty-of-the-Republic tightly against him, while with his other hand he'd twisted his cap into a prop to shove into the bullethole through which the river water came welling. He had lain on the prop to keep the water from pushing it out again, and he'd lain half over the baby sister to shield her if the airplanes and the bullets should come again.”

Meindert DeJong book The House of Sixty Fathers

The House of Sixty Fathers (1956)

Beauty, Sister, Water, Baby

“Schumpeter emphasizes a “demand-side” explanation for such clustering of innovation. One might also consider a complemen tary “supply-side” explanation: since innovators are, in many cases, working with the same components, it is not surprising to see simultaneous innovation, with several innovators coming up with essentially the same invention at almost the same time. There are many well-known examples, including the electric light, the airplane, the automobile, and the telephone.”

Hal Varian (1947) American economist

Hal R. Varian, Part I. "Competition and market power", in The Economics of Information Technology: An Introduction (2004) by Hal R.Varian, Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro

Light, Time

“Some people may think that okay, when we say Perfect Master, we’re talking about God, or we’re talking about prophet, or we’re talking about something like that. But really, in laymen’s term, to explain it, is that if somebody is a flight instructor, you would call them a flight instructor, or a flight teacher, or one who teaches about airplanes. If one was a professor of maths, he had mastered it, then you would call him teacher in maths, or instructor in maths [... ] the definition of a Perfect Master is the one who can give us the perfectness, one who can teach us the perfectness.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

October 4, 1981 Interview by John Young
1980s

God, People, Thinking, Teachers

“We're so conditioned as a people to think that a military campaign has to be cruise missiles and television images of airplanes dropping bombs, and that's just false. This is a totally different war. We need a new vocabulary. We need to get rid of old think and start thinking about this thing the way it really is.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

on CBS' Evening News, October 9, 2001 http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2051 2000s

War, People, Way, Thinking

“Roads must be used by cars and airplanes must fly in airports.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

16 March, 2016 As President, 2016 Source: La Sexta Noticias http://www.lasexta.com/noticias/nacional/aplastante-logica-rajoy-carreteras-tienen-que-coches-aeropuertos-tienen-que-salir-aviones_2016031600396.html

Cars, Flying

“"Good Heavens!" ("Ich bin vom Himmel gefallen!") Hitler exclaimed when he read Chamberlain's message. He was astounded but highly pleased that the man who presided over the destinies of the mighty British empire should come pleading to him, and flattered that a man who was sixty-nine years old and had never travelled in an airplane before should make the long seven hours' flight to Berchtesgaden at the farthest extremity of Germany. Hitler had not had even the grace to suggest a meeting place on the Rhine, which would have shortened the trip by half.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Travel, Reading

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

History, Star, Problem, Light

“I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then i could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that could hold us back”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

The New Year
Transatlanticism (2003)

World, Travel, Speed, Training

“(Sylvia at typewriter) Common misunderstandings of young married couples. (Young husband to tearful wife) Jeannie, when I said that your dinner tasted like airplane food, that was meant as a compliment.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 55

Food, Tear

“It is understandable but implausible…to insist upon prominent media accounts about law-abiding citizens and quotidian virtue; this is a bit like the airline industry complaining that the press does not write stories about airplanes that land safely.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 7

Law, Understanding

“Nothings gonna happen it's simply an airplane.”

Jessica Dubroff (1988–1996) American child pilot trainee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wQ57od6lcY

“You know, I remember Career Day in high school. I remember plumbers and lawyers... I don't remember a booth where you could sign up to learn how to shoot chickens out of a cannon at the windshield of an airplane, 'cause there would have been a line at my school to do that!”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

School, Learning

“I recently flew more than twelve thousand miles in a little over a month, through rain, fog, wind and snow, over mountains, cities and deserts, in a three-year-old, second-hand airplane that had already traveled some five hundred thousand miles. During that time I never was very late for an appointment or put a single scratch on myself. And considering that I am hardly an expert pilot at nineteen years of age, I knew that these statements must prove something about modern commercial aviation.”

Eddie August Schneider (1911–1940) American aviator

[Look Out, Lindbergh - Here I Come, Flying magazine, http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Eddie_August_Schneider_September_1931_Flying_magazine_page_1_of_4.png, September 1, 1930, Eddie August Schneider]

Age, Travel, Mountain, Time

“I like writing. It's the most fun I've ever had at anything. You can build your own little world and — like a kid with his toy trains, — except instead of trains I have tanks and ships and airplanes and things… I get to make them do all the things I want them to do, and if I don't like the way things work out, I start again.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
1980s

World, Way, Training

“I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again." Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

As quoted in The New Yorker (25 April 1988), p. 70

People, Hell, Thinking, Light

“(Pilot’s voice on airplane public address system) Geez, I’m sorry about that landing.... Why don’t I just go up and try again?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 52

“The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

"The Good People of Halifax", p. 390 (originally appeared in The Globe and Mail, 2001-09-20)
I Have Landed (2002)

Age, Evil

“In April 1946, when I came to Hughes Aircraft to institute high-technology research and development, it was far from the place it was to become. Howard Hughes, I was informed, rarely came around. When he did show up, it was to take up one or another trivial issue. He would toss off detailed directions, for instance, on what to do next about a few old airplanes decaying out in the yard or what kind of seat covers to buy for the company-owned Chevrolets, or he would say he wanted some pictures of clouds taken from an airplane. An accountant from Hughes Tool Co. ((started by Howard's father)) had the title of general manager but was there only to sign checks. A few of Howard's flying buddies were on the payroll, using assorted fanciful titles like some in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, but apparently did next to nothing. A lawyer was on hand to process contracts, but there were practically none. In addition to the Spruce Goose flying freighter, a mammoth eight-engine plywood seaplane that barely managed to fly even once, there was an experimental Navy reconnaissance plane under development (which, with Hughes at the controls, later crashed, almost killing him). The contracts for both planes had been canceled. Perhaps, I said to myself, this is one of those unforeseeable lucky opportunities. Why not use Hughes Aircraft as a base to create a new and needed defense electronics supplier?”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

MEMOIRS OF AN ICBM PIONEER Simon Ramo broke with Howard Hughes, then built TRW, the company that developed the U.S. missile. He says what went right then would go wrong today. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/04/25/70453/index.htm in FORTUNE Magazine, April 25, 1988

Flying

“I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I saw a preview for the movie Pearl Harbor. And they showed the Japanese airplanes coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor, and I applauded. Nobody else in the theater applauded.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_3.MP3 2000s

“Is it not our duty to find the symphonic formula which fits our time, one which progress, daring and modern victory demand? The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Music in History : The Evolution of an Art (1957) by Howard Decker McKinney and William Robert Anderson, p. 640
As quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 69
Variant: The century of aeroplanes deserves its own music. As there are no precedents, I must create anew.

Music, Time, Victory

“The relationship of volumes, lines, and colors demands absolute orchestration and order. These values are all unquestionable influential; they have extended into modern objects such as airplanes, automobiles, farm machines, etc. Today we are in competition with the 'beautiful object'; it is undeniable. Sometimes its plastic qualities make it beautiful in itself and consequently unusable; one can only fold one's arms and admire it. There is also today an astonishing art of window display. Certain store windows are highly organized spectacles... If, pushing things to extremes, the majority of manufactured objects and 'stored spectacles' were beautiful and had plasticity, we artists would no longer have any reason to exist.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from 'Notes on Contemporary Plastic Life', in 'Kunstblatt', Berlin 1923; as quoted in The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Léger, in Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, pp. 24-25
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Beauty, Art, Color