flight Quotes

“Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve–slowing, slowing, and stalling once more–was no ordinary bird.”

“Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.”

“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flights–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.”

“It was flight now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on for some hours.”

“We fought and won the race in space and listened to the cries of the Apollo 1 crew. With great resolve and personal anger, we picked up the pieces, pounded them together, and went on the attack again. We were the ones in the trenches of space and with only the tools of leadership, trust, and teamwork, we contained the risks and made the conquest of space possible.”

“Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.”

“Even in those days she’d held herself poised for immediate flight; she had always been ready to take off the minute she happened to feel like it (“Don’t talk to me that way, Frank, or I’m leaving. I mean it”) or the minute anything went wrong.”

“When Katy hit the curve she took off like a kite, High over the treetops on her first and last flight, That would quickly have ended poor Katy caboose If it hadn’t been for two towering spruce. The caboose became caught in a very tight squeeze Between the tall trunks of two evergreen trees.”