Aviation Quotes

(Click the Plane)

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." President Thomas Jefferson

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."  President Theodore Roosevelt 

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
Benjamin Franklin

"I've learned more in Iraq than I learned during four years at Harvard. There's no greater honor than leading men in defense of your country." LT Vincent Tuohey, USA

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.  You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." 
Dr. Adrian Rogers

 "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."  Margaret Thatcher

"Moderation in war is imbecility."  Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher

 "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

"One man with courage is a majority." President Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." George Bernard Shaw

"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." President Harry S Truman

“Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people." Lee Iacocca

"A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader." President Harry S Truman

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." President Theodore Roosevelt

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” Dr. Bob Beyster, SAIC Founder

"Diligence is the mother of good luck." Benjamin Franklin

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." General George S. Patton

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." John Lehman , Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." John Wooden

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney

"I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally." W. C. Fields

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly." William Jennings Bryan

"Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours." Benjamin Disraeli

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." George Bernard Shaw

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies." Groucho Marx

"Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings." George F. Will

"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." General George S. Patton

"From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea -- written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo -- There is no substitute for victory!" General of the Army Douglas MacArthur

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way." Will Rogers

"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." Wernher Von Braun

 

High Flight

By Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr, RCAF

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-splits clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod,
The high untrepassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

 

 

The United States Air Force Hymn

"Lord, guard and guide the men who fly
Through the great spaces of the sky;
Be with them traversing the air
In darkening storms or sunshine fair

Thou who dost keep with tender might
The balanced birds in all their flight
Thou of the tempered winds be near
That, having thee, they know no fear

Control their minds with instinct fit
What time, adventuring, they quit
The firm security of land;
Grant steadfast eye and skillful hand

Aloft in solitudes of space,
Uphold them with Thy saving grace.
O God, protect the men who fly
Thru lonely ways beneath the sky."

 

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