These aviation quotes will inspire you. Aviation is the flying or operating of aircraft.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging aviation quotes, aviation sayings, and aviation proverbs.
Famous Aviation Quotes
- “Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.” ~ Eddie Rickenbacker
- “To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home.” ~ Jerry Crawford
- “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
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“The lure of flying is the lure of beauty.” ~ Amelia Earhart
- “The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying.” ~ Neil Armstrong
- “And let’s get one thing straight. There’s a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight.” ~ Elrey Borge Jeppesen
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“The emergencies you train for almost never happen. It’s the one you can’t train for that kills you.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “But accuracy means something to me. It’s vital to my sense of values. I’ve learned not to trust people who are inaccurate. Every aviator knows that if mechanics are inaccurate. aircraft crash.” ~ Charles Lindbergh
- “In flying, the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.” ~ Neil Armstrong
- “My senses of space, of distance, and of direction entirely vanished. When I looked for the ground I sometimes looked down, sometimes up, sometimes left, sometimes right. I thought I was very high up when I would suddenly be thown to earth in a near vertical spin. I thought I was very low to the ground and I was pulled up to 3,000 feet in two minutes by the 500-horsepower motor. It danced, it pushed, it tossed. . . . Ah! la la!” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “Never quit. Never give up. Fly it to the end.” ~ Chuck Aaron
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“Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.” ~ Barry Goldwater
- “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.” ~ Helen Keller
- “Flight is romance – not in the sense of sexual attraction, but as an experience that enriches life.” ~ Stephen Coonts
- “The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul.” ~ Walter Alexander Raleigh
- “Flying without feathers is not easy: my wings have no feathers.” ~ Plautus
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“My soul is in the sky.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “We continue to subsidize highways and aviation, but when it comes to our passenger rail system, we refuse to provide the money Amtrak needs to survive.” ~ Corrine Brown
- “The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small.” ~ William Langewiesche
- “If you don’t like what you see, stop looking.” ~ Nancy Lopez
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“I’ve never known an industry that can get into people’s blood the way aviation does.” ~ Robert Six
- “Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.” ~ Amelia Earhart
- “I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “The aeroplane is the nearest thing to animate life that man has created. In the air a machine ceases indeed to be a mere piece of mechanism; it becomes animate and is capable not only of primary guidance and control but actually of expressing a pilot’s temperament.” ~ Ross Macpherson Smith , Aviation quotes about life
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“Experience comes from bad judgment.” ~ Mark Twain
- “Why fly? Simple. I’m not happy unless there’s some room between me and the ground.” ~ Richard Bach
- “Mistakes are inevitable in aviation, especially when one is still learning new things. The trick is to not make the mistake that will kill you.” ~ Stephen Coonts
- “In America, there are two classes of travel – first class, and with children.” ~ Robert Benchley
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“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Once you have learned to fly your plane, it is far less fatiguing to fly than it is to drive a car. You don’t have to watch every second for cats, dogs, children, lights, road signs, ladies with baby carriages and citizens who drive out in the middle of the block against the lights. . . . Nobody who has not been up in the sky on a glorious morning can possibly imagine the way a pilot feels in free heaven.” ~ William T. Piper
- “The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.” ~ Bill Gates
- “Flying is more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime.” ~ Adolf Galland
- “Great pilots are made not born. . . . A man may possess good eyesight, sensitive hands, and perfect coordination, but the end result is only fashioned by steady coaching, much practice, and experience.” ~ Johnnie Johnson
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“It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.” ~ Wernher von Braun
- “Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.” ~ Steven Wright
- “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” ~ Lord Kelvin
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“In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours – one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport.” ~ Neil H. McElroy
- “Flight Reservation Systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information isn’t in their database, then you simply don’t get to go anywhere.” ~ Arthur Miller
- “We want the air to unite the peoples, and not to divide them.” ~ Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Earl of Swinton
- “There is no excuse for an airplane unless it will fly fast!” ~ Roscoe Turner
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“It’s the most exciting thing you have ever done with your pants on!” ~ Stephen Coonts
- “Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this.” ~ Cecil Day-Lewis
- “Pilots are a rare kind of human. They leave the ordinary surface of the word, to purify their soul in the sky, and they come down to earth, only after receiving the communion of the infinite.” ~ Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra
- “What freedom lies in flying, what Godlike power it gives to men . . . I lose all consciousness in this strong unmortal space crowded with beauty, pierced with danger.” ~ Charles Lindbergh
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“Anyone can do the job when things are going right. In this business we play for keeps.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “The thing is helicopters are different from airplanes An airplane by it’s nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or incompetent piloting, it will fly” ~ Harry Reasoner
- “There are airmen and there are pilots: the first being part bird whose view from aloft is normal and comfortable, a creature whose brain and muscles frequently originate movements which suggest flight; and then there are pilots who regardless of their airborne time remain earth-loving bipeds forever. When these latter unfortunates, because of one urge or another, actually make an ascension, they neither anticipate nor relish the event and they drive their machines with the same graceless labor they inflict upon the family vehicle.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “He knew that we gave constant lip service to the dictates of safety and howled like Christians condemned to the arena if any compromise were made of it. He knew we were seekers after ease, suspicious, egotistic, and stubborn to a fault. He also knew that none of us would have continued our careers unless we had always been, and still were, helpless before this opportunity to take a chance.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
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“The way I see it, you can either work for a living or you can fly airplanes. Me, I’d rather fly.” ~ Len Morgan
- “A pilot’s business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “It is hard enough for anyone to map out a course of action and stick to it, particularly in the face of the desires of one’s friends; but it is doubly hard for an aviator to stay on the ground waiting for just the right moment to go into the air.” ~ Glenn Curtiss
- “A pilot who says he has never been frightened in an airplane is, I’m afraid, lying.” ~ Louise Thaden
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“Never fly anything that doesn’t have the paint worn off the rudder Pedals.” ~ Bill Harry
- “A pilot must have a memory developed to absolute perfection. But there are two higher qualities which he also must have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.” ~ Mark Twain
- “Electronics were rascals, and they lay awake nights trying to find some way to screw you during the day. You could not reason with them. They had a brain and intestines, but no heart.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “The quality of the box matters little. Success depends upon the man who sits in it.” ~ Manfred von Richthofen
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“Remember, you fly an airplane with you head, not your hands and feet.” ~ Bevo Howard
- “Nobody who gets too damned relaxed builds up much flying time.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “It’s when things are going just right that you’d better be suspicious. There you are, fat as can be. The whole world is yours and you’re the answer to the Wright brothers’ prayers. You say to yourself, nothing can go wrong … all my trespasses are forgiven. Best you not believe it.” ~ Ernest K. Gann
- “Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but – you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?” ~ Yip Harburg
- “You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn’t any woman and there isn’t any horse, nor any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “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
Aviation is the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry.
