Quotes about plane
page 4

Calvin Coolidge photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Asimov: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you'll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest.
On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people's daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner's compass… and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, "What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?" Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived.
But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant—in terms of real change—when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane.”

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

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Hermann Göring photo
Paul Cézanne photo
Kazimir Malevich photo
Paul Bourget photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“But the quality of the result obtained by using a pin-hole to which its advocates attach most importance is the suppression of sharp focus over the whole image, no one plane being more sharply focused than another.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 61

James Dickey photo
Arundhati Roy photo

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

On a 1962 visit to India quoted in A Hero for Our Time (1983) by Ralph G Martin

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Bill Maher photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Nathalia Crane photo
Mobutu Sésé Seko photo

“I cannot sleep at all on a plane and I am terribly scared of sleeping pills. To accuse me of wasting money - no, I am sorry. Just think of the time I save.”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

Mobutu, asked by a German journalist to justify the expense of his Concorde while the nation's economy was in crisis. Meredith, p. 532

Richard R. Wright Jr. photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
David Spade photo
Frederick Soddy photo
George Gissing photo

“Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. II

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Hans Arp photo
Michael Savage photo

“Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov, Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males." … The great majority of advancements past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of colors and genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from nonwhites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males. … If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a Third World cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life-improving inventions that we now enjoy? … Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own—be he a white male or other—be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a Democratic society, it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture (2003), pp. 136–138; "White Male Inventions" http://www.dadi.org/ms_dwm.htm (December 15, 1999)

Cora L. V. Scott photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
Vitruvius photo
Rush Limbaugh photo
Fernando J. Corbató photo
Hans Reichenbach photo

“It is remarkable that this generalization of plane geometry to surface geometry is identical with that generalization of geometry which originated from the analysis of the axiom of parallels. …the construction of non-Euclidean geometries could have been equally well based upon the elimination of other axioms. It was perhaps due to an intuitive feeling for theoretical fruitfulness that the criticism always centered around the axiom of parallels. For in this way the axiomatic basis was created for that extension of geometry in which the metric appears as an independent variable. Once the significance of the metric as the characteristic feature of the plane has been recognized from the viewpoint of Gauss' plane theory, it is easy to point out, conversely, its connection with the axiom of parallels. The property of the straight line as being the shortest connection between two points can be transferred to curved surfaces, and leads to the concept of straightest line; on the surface of the sphere the great circles play the role of the shortest line of connection… analogous to that of the straight line on the plane. Yet while the great circles as "straight lines" share the most important property with those of the plane, they are distinct from the latter with respect to the axiom of the parallels: all great circles of the sphere intersect and therefore there are no parallels among these "straight lines". …If this idea is carried through, and all axioms are formulated on the understanding that by "straight lines" are meant the great circles of the sphere and by "plane" is meant the surface of the sphere, it turns out that this system of elements satisfies the system of axioms within two dimensions which is nearly identical in all of it statements with the axiomatic system of Euclidean geometry; the only exception is the formulation of the axiom of the parallels.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The geometry of the spherical surface can be viewed as the realization of a two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry: the denial of the axiom of the parallels singles out that generalization of geometry which occurs in the transition from the plane to the curve surface.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Piet Mondrian photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“The life in Italy is the life of a wealthy country, consumptions haven't diminished, it's hard to find seats on planes, our restaurants are full of people.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

Denying the heaviness of the Italian crisis, during the news conference after the end of the G20 summit held in Cannes (3-4 November 2011), as reported in "Napolitano ammonisce: attuare impegni. Premier: la crisi non c'è, ristoranti pieni" in Il Messaggero (4 November 2011) http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=168779&sez=HOME_INITALIA&ssez=POLITICA, and "Silvio Berlusconi shrugs off IMF's financial checks on Italy. Prime minister insists Italy is in good health, with debts under control, and points to full restaurants as proof of strength" in The Guardian (4 November 2011) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/04/silvio-berlusconi-imf-italy
2011

Roger Shepard photo
Rufus Wainwright photo
Sun Ra photo

“Behold the pre-prophetic symbols of the planes of Never.
Behold, behold this thisness!
This isness.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

"Tomorrow is Never" (1972), p. 252
Sun Ra : The Immeasurable Equation (2005)

William Moulton Marston photo

“Women now fly heavy planes successfully; they help build planes, do mechanics' work. In England they've taken over a large share of all material labor in fields and factories; they've taken over police and home defence duties. In China a corps of 300,000 women under the supreme command of Madame Chiang Kai-shek perform the dangerous function of saving lives and repairing damage after Japanese air raids. This huge female strong- arm squad is officered efficiently by 3,000 women. Here in this country we've started a Women's Auxilary Army and Navy Corps that will do everything men soldiers and sailors do except the actual fighting. Prior to the First World War nobody believed that women could perform these feats of physical strength. But they're performing them now and thinking nothing of it. In this far worse: war, women will develop still greater female power; by the end of the war that traditional description the weaker sex" will be a joke-it will cease to have any meaning.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

As interviewed by Richard, Olive, "Our Women are Our Future": Sylvia Family Circle, (Aug 14, 1944) 14-17, 19 as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda", in Containing Wonder Woman: Fredric Wertham's Battle Against the Mighty Amazon by Craig This, p.32.

James Carville photo

“Let me buy a [security] pass … so that they can scan me and and search me and measure my penis, then let me get on the plane.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

The Tony Kornheiser Show (January 15, 2010)

Subh-i-Azal photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Albert Gleizes photo
Louis Kronenberger photo

“Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfilment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 65.

“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

Mr. T photo

“I ain't getting on no plane, Hannibal!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Quotes from acting

Horace Bushnell photo
Michael Moore photo

“Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. … If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D. C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Statement of 12 September 2001 attributed to Moore, as published in [Michael Moore, Humbug, City Journal, Summer 2003, Kay S., Hymowitz, http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_michael_moore.html]
2001

Max Beckmann photo

“To me the most important thing [in a picture] is roundness captured in height and breadth. Roundness in the plane, depth in the feeling of the plane.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Quote from Schopferische Konfession (Creative credo) of 1918; first published in 'Tribune der Kunst und Zeit', no. 13 (1920): 66; for an English translation, see Victor H. Miesel, ed. Voices of German Expressionism, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 101
1900s - 1920s

Samuel Beckett photo
Paul Cézanne photo
Max Born photo
Charles Lindbergh photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“the Cubists in Paris made me see that there was also a possibility of suppressing the natural aspect of form. I continued my research by abstracting the form and purifying the colour more and more. While working, I arrived at suppressing the closed effect of abstract form, expressing myself exclusively by means of the straight line in rectangular opposition; thus by rectangular planes of colour with white, grey and black. At that time, I encountered artists with approximately the same spirit, First Van der Leck, who, though still figurative, painted in compact planes of pure colour. My more or less cubist technique - in consequence still more or less picturesque - underwent the influence of his exact technique. Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Van Doesburg. Full of vitality and zeal for the already international movement that was called 'abstract', and most sincerely appreciative of my work, he came to ask me to collaborate in a review he intended to publish, and which he [Theo van Doesburg] was to call 'De Stijl.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

I was happy with an opportunity to publish my ideas on art, which I was engaged in writing down: I saw the possibility of contacts with similar efforts.
Quote of Mondrian c 1931, in 'De Stijl' (last number), p. 48; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, pp. 44-45
published in the memorial number of 'De Stijl', after the death of Theo Van Doesburg in 1931
1930's

Paul Cézanne photo
Elon Musk photo

“We have planes, trains, automobiles and boats, … What if there was a fifth mode?”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

on the Hyperloop.
[Garber, Megan, The Real iPod: Elon Musk's Wild Idea for a 'Jetson Tunnel' from S.F. to L.A., http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-real-ipod-elon-musks-wild-idea-for-a-jetson-tunnel-from-sf-to-la/259825/, 21 July 2012, The Atlantic, 13 July 2012]

Perry Anderson photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Bruce Schneier photo
Bill Engvall photo
Jane Roberts photo

“I pay taxes, of course. I believe in these things no more than Emerson or Thoreau, but resistance to them is folly, except on the mental plane.”

John William Lloyd (1857–1940) American anarchist, sexologist, utopian theorist and author (1857-1940)

The Natural Man (1902)

Richard Evelyn Byrd photo

“If the expedition had failed, which it might well have done with all hope centered in just one plane, I should still be trying to pay back my obligations.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

On his expedition to fly over the North Pole. His claim to have done so is now widely disputed. Skyward (1928)

Guy Debord photo
Edgar Degas photo
Katie Melua photo
Dylan Moran photo

“I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out, and I counted them all back. Their pilots were unhurt, cheerful and jubilant, giving thumbs up signs.”

Brian Hanrahan (1949–2010) British journalist and television presenter

BBC News 20 December 2010 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12037973

Noam Chomsky photo
Phillip Guston photo
Joanna MacGregor photo

“It's a life of planes and trains.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Newsquest Media Group Newspapers, 03/03/2005
Musician's life

Theo van Doesburg photo

“We are now in the middle of a long process of transition in the nature of the image which man has of himself and his environment. Primitive men, and to a large extent also men of the early civilizations, imagined themselves to be living on a virtually illimitable plane. There was almost always somewhere beyond the known limits of human habitation, and over a very large part of the time that man has been on earth, there has been something like a frontier…
Gradually, however, man has been accustoming himself to the notion of the spherical earth and a closed sphere of human activity. A few unusual spirits among the ancient Greeks perceived that the earth was a sphere. It was only with the circumnavigations and the geographical explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, that the fact that the earth was a sphere became at all widely known and accepted. Even in the thirteenth century, the commonest map was Mercator's projection, which visualizes the earth as an illimitable cylinder, essentially a plane wrapped around the globe, and it was not until the Second World War and the development of the air age that the global nature of tile planet really entered the popular imagination. Even now we are very far from having made the moral, political, and psychological adjustments which are implied in this transition from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966, p. 3

Gunnar Myrdal photo
Michael Ignatieff photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo
Jan Oort photo

“The article indicates how three facts concerning the long-period comets, which hitherto were not well understood, namely the random distribution of orbital planes and of perihelions, and the preponderance of nearly-parabolic orbits, may be considered as necessary consequences of the perturbations acting on the comets.”

Jan Oort (1900–1992) Dutch astronomer

[The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the Solar System and a hypothesis concerning its origin, Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands, 11, 408, 91–110, 3 January 1950, 91, https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/6036/BAN_11_91_110.pdf?sequence=1] (quote from p. 91)

Wassily Kandinsky photo
José Mourinho photo
Harry Browne photo

“Whenever the government fails to prevent a plane crash, the event is cited as justification for having the government prevent plane crashes.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

Source: Liberty A to Z (2004), p. 147

Augustus De Morgan photo
The Mother photo
Lewis H. Morgan photo

“Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”

Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881) United States ethnologist

As quoted in Friedrich Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm

Moby photo

“Ozzy Osbourne used to snort ants. Led Zeppelin had sex with hookers on private planes. And I start an on-tour book club. Because one can only snort so many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and companionship of a good book.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"to Copenhagen. bumpy roads & ant colonies http://www.moby.com/taxonomy/term/1048/0," journal entry (7 October 2002) at moby.com

Robert Mueller photo
George W. Bush photo