Quotes about airplane
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Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“I want to deal with one or two of these mighty precious values that we've left behind, that if we're to go forward and to make this a better world, we must rediscover. The first is this—the first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I'm not so sure we all believe that. We never doubt that there are physical laws of the universe that we must obey. We never doubt that. And so we just don't jump out of airplanes or jump off of high buildings for the fun of it—we don't do that. Because we unconsciously know that there is a final law of gravitation, and if you disobey it you'll suffer the consequences—we know that. Even if we don't know it in its Newtonian formulation, we know it intuitively, and so we just don't jump off the highest building in Detroit for the fun of it—we don't do that. Because we know that there is a law of gravitation which is final in the universe. (Lord) If we disobey it we'll suffer the consequences. But I'm not so sure if we know that there are moral laws just as abiding as the physical law. I'm not so sure about that. I'm not so sure if we really believe that there is a law of love in this universe, and that if you disobey it you'll suffer the consequences.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

José Mourinho photo
Jacob M. Appel photo

“Much as we do not permit convicted pedophiles to teach kindergarten or convicted hijackers to board airplanes, common sense dictates that individuals who have been imprisoned for plotting violence against abortion clinics should never again be permitted anywhere near such facilities.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"The Case for an Anti-Abortion Violence Registry," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/the-case-for-an-anti-abor_b_222559.html The Huffington Post (2009-06-29)

Phil Hartman photo
Yen Teh-fa photo

“Only we can be counted on to save our nation, and indigenous shipbuilding and airplane building programs will help establish the research and development capability of our national defense industry.”

Yen Teh-fa (1952) Taiwanese politician

Yen Teh-fa (2018) cited in " Taiwan losing military edge: US report http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/08/18/2003698716/2" on Taipei Times, 18 August 2018

Roger Ebert photo

“Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again… This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008 of Synecdoche, New York (5 November 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Ze Frank photo

“(On airplane etiquette) Although reclining your seat is technically your right, just like free speech if you exercise it to your limits everyone around you will think you're an asshole.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_08-23-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“11. We shall sing the great masses shaken with work, pleasure, or rebellion: we shall sing the multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution in the modern metropolis; shall sing the vibrating nocturnal fervor of factories and shipyards burning under violent electrical moons; bloated railroad stations that devour smoking serpents; factories hanging from the sky by the twisting threads of spiraling smoke; bridges like gigantic gymnasts who span rivers, flashing at the sun with the gleam of a knife; adventurous steamships that scent the horizon, locomotives with their swollen chest, pawing the tracks like massive steel horses bridled with pipes, and the oscillating flight of airplanes, whose propeller flaps at the wind like a flag and seems to applaud like a delirious crowd.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Original Italian text:
Noi canteremo le grandi folle agitate dal lavoro, dal piacere o dalla sommossa: canteremo le maree multicolori e polifoniche delle rivoluzioni nelle capitali moderne; canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano; le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l'orizzonte, le locomotive dall'ampio petto, che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d'acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aereoplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 52 : Last bullet-item in THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

Donald J. Trump photo
George W. Bush photo
Stevie Nicks photo

“That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on the inspiration for "Gypsy") Leah Greenblatt, "Stevie Nicks On Her Favorite Songs: A Music Mix Exclusive", http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/03/31/stevie-nicks-in/ Entertainment Weekly, 31 March 2009

Jackson Pollock photo
Harry Truman photo

“Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)
Context: Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet.

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons — horizons seen from mastheads, from airplanes; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?"
This is what children ask. But then children are the boldest philosophers.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons — horizons seen from mastheads, from airplanes; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?"
This is what children ask. But then children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naive and so frighteningly complex. The new men entering life today are as naked and fearless as children; and they, too, like children, like Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, ask "Why?" and "What next?" Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise — because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment with an excellent toilet and a well-furnished dogma.

Stansfield Turner photo

“America and Russia have excessive numbers of nuclear weapons today because we treated nuclear weapons, at the end of World War II, like they were just bigger conventional weapons. If you have tanks, and the other side has more than you, you may be in trouble — or airplanes or ships or whatever. With nuclear weapons, it's not the same: they're too powerful, and at some point you just can't use any more, it's just not meaningful.”

Stansfield Turner (1923–2018) former United States Navy admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence and President of the Naval Wa…

Interview (18 December 1997) http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/turner1.html for CNN : Cold War. Episode 21 : Spies (14 March 1999)
1990s
Context: America and Russia have excessive numbers of nuclear weapons today because we treated nuclear weapons, at the end of World War II, like they were just bigger conventional weapons. If you have tanks, and the other side has more than you, you may be in trouble — or airplanes or ships or whatever. With nuclear weapons, it's not the same: they're too powerful, and at some point you just can't use any more, it's just not meaningful. But what happened was, we had the lead of course, because we invented them. The Russians tried to catch up with us; we tried to stay ahead of the Russians; they tried to catch up with us, and we just had a never-ending race upward. By the mid-Sixties, we realized this, but because of the Cold War mentality, politicians couldn't stand up and say, "I'm willing to have less than the Soviet Union," and so the race continued, but we tried to mitigate it by instituting an arms control process, which at first tried to cap and then later to reduce these numbers. … there's just no way you can actually use them; they become so destructive. I estimate that a couple of hundred nuclear weapons, not just on the center of cities, but on economic positions in the country, will drive a country to the point it will never recover, it will never be the same again. It will survive, but it'll be a totally different country. You don't need thousands to do that. There are only a few hundred cities of any size in even Russia or the United States, like 200, and you just don't need thousands of weapons to demobilize a country.

Fred Phelps photo

“There were five thousand or ten thousand killed and, counting all those passengers in those airplanes, it's very likely that every last single one of them was a fag or dyke or a fag enabler, and that the minute he died, he split hell wide open”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, God Hates America (2001)
Context: How many do you suppose of those hundred in the Pentagon last Tuesday were fags and dykes? And how many do you suppose were working in that massively composed building structure called those two World Trade Center buildings, Twin Towers? There were five thousand or ten thousand killed and, counting all those passengers in those airplanes, it's very likely that every last single one of them was a fag or dyke or a fag enabler, and that the minute he died, he split hell wide open, and the way to analyze the situation is that the Lord God Almighty, pursuant to His threatenings and warnings, killed him, looked him in the face, laughed and mocked at each one of them as He cast each one of them into Hell!

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“To literature today the plane surface of daily life is what the earth is to an airplane — a mere runway from which to take off, in order to rise aloft, from daily life to the realities of being, to philosophy, to the fantastic.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: The formal character of a living literature is the same as its inner character: it denies verities; it denies what everyone knows and what I have known until this moment. It departs from the canonical tracks, from the broad highway. … To literature today the plane surface of daily life is what the earth is to an airplane — a mere runway from which to take off, in order to rise aloft, from daily life to the realities of being, to philosophy, to the fantastic. Let yesterday's cart creak along the well-paved highways. The living have strength enough to cut away their yesterday.

Niki Lauda photo

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

Bill Bryson photo

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

Lynn Compton photo
Bill Withers photo
Bill Maher photo
Richard E. Cole photo

“Our airplane had incendiary bombs. Our mission was to light up Tokyo.”

Richard E. Cole (1915–2019) career officer in the United States Air Force and participant in the Doolittle Raid (1915-2019)

On the bombload the aircraft carried for the raid.
Interview with HistoryNet (2019)

Donald Wills Douglas Sr. photo