Annual List of Inspirational Flying Quotes

As a general rule, pilots are usually very intelligent, Type A individuals. But we’re also romantics at heart, especially when it comes to flying an aircraft. Here is our new annual list of inspirational aviation quotes — one of our most popular features of the year. Quotes courtesy of skygod.com.

Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.

— Amelia Earhart, 20 Hrs 40 Mins, 1928

Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery — the epitome of breaking into new worlds.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, introduction to Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, 1929

Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see …

— Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis, 1953

Dad, I left my heart up there.

— Francis Gary Powers, CIA U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union,
describing his first flight at age 14

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky, behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

— Helen Keller, at age 74, on flight around the world, news reports of 5 February 1955

The most beautiful dream that has haunted the heart of man since Icarus is today reality.

— Louis Bleriot

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? — it is the same the angels breathe.

— Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XXII, 1886

All agreed that the sensation of coasting on the air was delightful.

— Octave Chanute, regards people who tried his gliders, 1894

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

— Orville Wright

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

— Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

— Socrates

O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

— Walt Whitman, One Hour to Madness and Joy, 1860

There is no sport equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings.

— Wilbur Wright, 1905

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