Quotes about flight
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“Let no man.. despair because he thinks the task too great for him; what man has done man can do, and just in proportion as we extend our aid to those whom we can help, so will those who have already attained be able in their turn to help us. So from the lowest to the highest we who are treading the steps of the path are bound together by one long chain of mutual service, and none need feel neglected or alone, for though sometimes the lower flights of the great staircase may be wreathed in mist, we know that it leads up to happier regions and purer air, where the light is always shining.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

Despair, Light, Help, Thinking

“There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the Moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society, which we find in our country. And we should note that the application of sophisticated technologies and methods of analysis to our problems is not to be confused with embarking on grandiose schemes, whose primary impact is for show rather than for progress measured in hard economic and social terms.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

Quoted in "List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai"
Source: [List Of Important Speeches And Papers By Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai., https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, PRL.res.in, 27 June 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190627181445/https://www.prl.res.in/~library/sarabhai_v_speeches.pdf, 27 June 2019, 113]

Problem, Question, Country, Communication

“There have been many legends invented about Charlemagne, but he was no legend. Out of the shattered ruins of the ancient world he built the modern world, and even now reflection on his feat quickens the pulse. It was an achievement as daring as any long transoceanic flight of our day, but it called also for endurance lasting not hours but decades, and for adventure of the mind as well as of the body; a vast new political trajectory was described as well as a military one.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal," in Woman as Artist and Thinker, Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005.

World

“Prayer is also an art, an exercise of beauty, of song, of inner liberation. It is ascesis and ascent, it is a rigorous effort, but also a gentle and free flight of the soul toward God.”

Gianfranco Ravasi (1942) Catholic cardinal

Foreword
The Encounter: Discovering God Through Prayer (2014)

Soul, God, Beauty, Art

“What captured the heart and soul of the discerning listener was his uncanny craftiness and skill, the unfailing imaginative flights, rhythmic continuity and singular charm, making their lasting impact.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

Critique

Imagination, Soul, Making love, Heart

“Life has two wings : one, sorrow; one, delight;
Love gives it pinions, God directs its flight.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 308.
Original: (it) Ha due ali la vita : il gaudio e il duolo;
L’amor la impenna, e Dio dirige il volo.
Original: (it) Stornelli, "Una Vedova ad una Sjéosa".

Love, Life, Making love, God

“Once a virus gets into an intensive poultry shed it can move quickly through the flock, constantly replicating itself. Any "errors" or changes to the genetic code during replication don't get repaired: this is how the virus mutates and new variant strains emerge. The tragedy is that while intensive farms provide ideal conditions for the emergence of new aggressive disease strains, wild birds can then become infected too. Experience from the 2005 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) H5N1 suggests that the disease is more likely spread along major road and rail routes than on the flight routes of migratory birds.”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Bird, Error, Disease, Change

“When in my residence in Carolina and Florida, I have seen vast flights of the house swallow (hirundo pelasgia) and bank martin (hirundo riparia) passing onward northward toward Pennsylvania, where they breed in the spring, about the middle of March, and likewise in the autumn in September or October, and large flights on their return southward. And it is observable that they always avail themselves of the advantage of high and favouralbe winds, which likewise do all birds of passage.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 236, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=242]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Housing, Bird, Autumn, Spring

“You could hold her tight with all your might but she'd slip through your arms like the wind and be back in flight back into the night where you might never see her again.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

That Girl Could Sing (1980)

Night

“A severe action ensued from dawn to mid-day, when "the army of idolatry and damnation turned its back in flight from the line of battle.... fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword... and from the heaps of the slain, the hills and the plains became of one level.”

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Source: Elliot and Dowson, Vol 2. 230.

Hell

“I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation.””

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society. <br class="br">As a response to Major B. F. S. Baden Powell's request to join the Aeronautical Society, December 8, 1896 http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell. <br class="br">Often reproduced out of context and without citation to any primary source as "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", like in The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (1984) by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, p. 236

“A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”

John Steinbeck book Journal of a Novel

From a letter to Pascal Covici (1952)
Journal of a Novel (1969)

Flowers, Books, Sun, Beauty

“The moment I boarded the flight I was thinking, 'This is an enemy state.'”

Kim Hyon-hui (1962) former North Korean agent

But then, placing the bomb, I was nervous, anxious, scared of being caught. I had a brief moment thinking that all the people in this plane will die, but I was frightened to even have such feelings. I wasn’t supposed to have such feelings. I was trained only to take orders like a robot. I tried to get rid of the feelings by thinking that for the sake of reunification these people had to be sacrificed. In North Korea, you can’t have these doubts, because if you do, it means your ideology has been corrupted and you’ll be executed or sent to a prison camp.
Interview with NBC (23 January 2018)

Thinking

“No, I'm not interested, don't lead me into your rubbish, don't you keep taking us on your flights of fancy. Your city lily pad lefty map mindset.”

Bob Katter (1945) Australian politician

Source: Media Briefing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2Ned5Tgwg?oneclick=true (Thursday, 13 February 2020)

“Warriors speak of shamanism as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose; warriors live under the wind of that bird, which they call the "bird of wisdom," the "bird of freedom."”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "The Power of Silence" (Chapter 18)

Freedom, Hope, Bird, Wisdom