Octave Chanute Quotes

The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers.

I believe the new machine of the Wrights to be the most promising attempt at flight that has yet been made.

Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic.

No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.

It would be right to state that, with the successful flight of the XR-4 in the summer of 1942, the helicopter became a reality in the United States.

We returned home, after these experiments, with the conviction that sailing flight was not the exclusive prerogative of birds.

The mathematician of to-day admits that he can neither square the circle, duplicate the cube or trisect the angle. May not our mechanicians, in like manner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which men can never cope... I do not claim that this is a necessary conclusion from any past experience. But I do think that success must await progress of a different kind from that of invention.

It seems to me that the conquest of the air is the only major task for our generation.

But we must admit the possibility that continued investigation and experience will bring us ever nearer to that solemn moment, when the first man will rise from earth by means of wings, if only for a few seconds, and mark that historical moment which heralds the inauguration of a new era in our civilization.

Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes - not yet, anyhow.

The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.

The helicopter is probably the most versatile instrument ever invented by man. It approaches closer than any other to fulfillment of mankind's ancient dreams of the flying horse and the magic carpet.

...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.

I lay no claim to advancing scientific data other than advancing flying knowledge. I can only say that I do it because I want to.

My objective is and has been for years to make the lightest and most compact flying machine that would carry me at 25 or 30 miles per hour for 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour. Current events show this is not at all an ambitious project. Want of an elementary knowledge of oil machines baulks me and causes much misdirected effort. I doubt my ability to acquire that knowledge, and feel like a fireman trying to hew out a donkey pump.

This machine was a failure to the extent that it could not fly. In other respects it was a very important and necessary stepping stone.

The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them.

If you get on a TV show that's successful, odds are that you're playing the same character for as many years as the show is running, which can be its own blessing, but it can also be a curse because you're playing the same thing and that can be tiresome.

There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.

I think that comics and television, as mediums, go hand in hand. Both tell long-form, continuing stories that are parsed out into little chapters and, if are successful, continue for years and years. What that means to me, as a writer, is it tells stories of transformation and evolution as characters.

Virginia Mayo had kind of a small role in The Best Years of Our Lives, but you got the whole character in one scene. Where are those parts? I was talking to somebody about great actors: Morgan Freeman's name came up, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington. And I realized, there're no black actresses. Where's there a black actress who's been extremely successful in the past 10 years?

A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard of the public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the remembrance of past service will quickly languish unless successive performances frequently revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is new hazard, and there are few who do not, at some unlucky time, injure their own characters by attempting to enlarge them.

A period romance film with elements of horror. That was successful, because I feel like Coppola's DRACULA was one or the other. You know? It was never scary it was never a film he got invested in the romance of the characters. He understood it, but he never got invested. So it as a challenge for me to see if I could do that, I still don't know how audiences will sort of react to that.

I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.

Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor.