Picabo Street Quotes

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.

Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet.

The first plane ride was in a homemade glider my buddy and I built. Unfortunately we didn't get more than four feet off the ground, because it crashed.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of N.A.S.A. to make one.

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.

Quite likely the twentieth century is destined to see the natural forces which will enable us to fly from continent to continent with a speed far exceeding that of a bird.

Men will sometimes fly, but it will not be in our lifetime.

I believe that simple flight at least is possible to man and that the experiments and investigations of a large number of independent workers will result in the accumulation of information, knowledge, and skill which will finally lead to accomplished flight.

I think the weirdest question I've ever gotten was, 'If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes?'

Growing up in the 1960s, I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by airplanes and rockets.

As soon as I have got flying to perfection, I have got a scheme about a steam engine.

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings.

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

Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.

People can fly. Some people fly higher than others, that's all.

Artificial flight may be defined as that form of aviation in which a man flies at will in any direction by means of an apparatus attached to his body, the use of which requires personal skill. Artificial flight by a single individual is the proper beginning for all species of artificial flight, as the necessary conditions can most easily be fulfilled when man flies individually.

The human body is capable of amazing physical deeds. If we could just free ourselves from our perceived limitations and tap into our internal fire, the possibilities are endless.

Every flight begins with a fall.

The highest art form of all is a human being in control of himself and his airplane in flight, urging the spirit of a machine to match his own.