Inspirational flying quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
Powerful Collection of Most Famous Flying Quotes
When you think about flying, it’s nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you’re sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn’t make any sense. – David Letterman
Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price. – Amelia Earhart
What kind of man would live where there is no daring? I don’t believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all. – Charles A. Lindbergh
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 B. Jeppesen
Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror. – Gregory ”Pappy” Boyington
Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see . . . – Charles A. Lindbergh
The exhilaration of flying is too keen, the pleasure too great, for it to be neglected as a sport. – Orville Wright
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
Flying is more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime. – General Adolf Galland
Flying is a lot like playing a musical instrument; you’re doing so many things and thinking of so many other things, all at the same time. It becomes a spiritual experience. Something wonderful happens in the pit of your stomach. – Dusty Mctavish
When everything seems to be against you, remember that an airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. – Henry Ford
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. – Elinor Smith
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. – Wilbur Wright
Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks. – Charles A. Lindbergh
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 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
Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery – the epitome of breaking into new worlds. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime’s learning experience. For the best pilots, flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than the others; that’s why they’re the best. Experience is everything. – Chuck Yeager
Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done. – Amelia Earhart
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci
There is no sport equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings. – Wilbur Wright
More than anything else, the sensation of flying is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost – if you can conceive of such a combination. – Wilbur Wright
I learned the discipline of flying in order to have the freedom of flight….Discipline prevents crashes. – Captain John Cook
The way I see it, you can either work for a living or you can fly airplanes. Me, I’d rather fly. – Len Morgan
Do the impossible because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies. – Howard Hughes
I was annoyed from the start by the attitude of doubt by the spectators that I would never really make the flight. This attitude made me more determined than ever to succeed. – Harriet Quimby
I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty. That the reasons flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying. – Amelia Earhart
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
To become an ace a fighter must have extraordinary eyesight, strength, and agility, a huntsman’s eye, coolness in a pinch, calculated recklessness, a full measure of courage and occasional luck! – Jimmy Doolittle
Don’t ever let a fear of failing keep you from knowing the joys of flight. – Lane Wallace
Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description. – Barry M. Goldwater
Flying is inherently dangerous. We like to gloss that over with clever rhetoric and comforting statistics, but these facts remain: gravity is constant and powerful, and speed kills. In combination, they are particularly destructive. – Dan Manningham
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. – James Edgar Johnson
It has been my observation that the happiest of people, the vibrant doers of the world, are almost always those who are using – who are putting into play, calling upon, depending upon the greatest number of their God-given talents and capabilities. – John Glenn
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. – Douglas Adams
There is no more exciting sport than flying, for if you lose, you die. – Christopher Paolini
Flying is awful, there’s nothing to do when you’re up in the air. I bloat up, my skin gets dry, and when we hit turbulence, I’m terrified. – Daniela Pestova
I don’t have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing. – Billy Bob Thornton
I’ve learned more about people through my association with aviation than I ever did about airplanes. – Paul Poberezny
You can’t hug your grandchildren or visit your adult children online. Playing Internet golf is no fun. Having a vacation home loses a lot of its charm when it takes you two days of every three-day weekend to drive to it and back. A personal airplane changes all those dynamics. – Alan Klapmeier
Why fly? Simple. I’m not happy unless there’s some room between me and the ground. – Richard Bach
I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport…. – Amy Johnson
There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. – Orson Welles
You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky. – Amelia Earhart
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Learning to fly is one of humankind’s most inspiring achievements. When you learn to fly it changes who you are and how you think of yourself forever. – John King
I like to have around me people who find ways to do things, not tell me why they can’t be done. – Olive Ann Beech
Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared. Eddie Rickenbacker. – Eddie Richard
There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
That’s the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again. – Jennifer E. Smith
Flying can be easy at times, but with the wrong machine or the wrong person at the controls, it is the most difficult thing in the world. – Paul Gallagher
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. – Friedrich Nietzsche
One of the things I teach my children is that I have always invested in myself, and I have never stopped learning, never stopped growing. – Chesley Sullenberger
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
It’s the same with anyone who’s been flying for years and loves it still… we’re part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we’re one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind! – Richard Bach
To most people the sky is the limit. To those who love flying, the sky is home. – unknown
I was sold on flying as soon as I had a taste for it. – John Glenn
If you are bored flying, your standards are too low. – Lauran Paine Jr
In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. – Wilbur Wright
Flying is within our grasp. We have naught to do but take it. – Charles F. Duryea
We who fly do so for the love of flying. We are alive in the air with this miracle that lies in our hands and beneath our feet. – Cecil Day Lewis
Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin. – K.O. Eckland
[Flying] fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments; it stirs our capacity for dreaming. – Joyce Carol
All my life, I’ve never been able to get enough airplanes. This will keep me flying every day. – Astronaut Robert ‘Hoot’ Gibson
Flying prevails whenever a man and his airplane are put to a test of maximum performance. – Richard Bach
I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand… Adventure is a state of mind – and spirit. – Jacqueline Cochran
Prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable … after 50 years of flying I’m still learning every time I fly. – Gene Cernan, American astronaut
I don’t think I possess any skill that anyone else doesn’t have. I’ve just had perhaps more of an opportunity, more of an exposure, and been fortunate to survive a lot of situations that many others weren’t so lucky to make it. It’s not how close can you get to the ground, but how precise can you fly the airplane. – Bob Hoover
Below twenty, boys are too rash for flying. Above twenty-five they are too prudent. – W.J. Abbott
Flying is hypnotic and all pilots are victims to the spell. Their world is like a magic island in which the factors of life and death assume their proper values. Thinking becomes clear because there are no earthly foibles or embellishments to confuse it. – Ernest K. Gann
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers. – Plautus
There is no flying without wings. – French Proverb
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. – Gilbert K. Chesterton
The good thing about flying solo is it’s never boring. – Steve Fossett
It’s only when you’re flying above it that you realize how incredible the Earth really is. – Philippe Perrin
Flying is done largely with the imagination. – Wolfgang Langwiesche
See driving is like stabbing someone, it’s very personal. While flying is like shooting someone, it’s more distant. – Bushwick Bill
