Charles Lindbergh

“It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.”

“There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war.”

“It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.”

“I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.”

“After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and the sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.”

“I am shocked at the attitude of our American troops. They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the ordinary decencies of life.”

“To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission.”

“Isn't it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?”

“Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.”

“Flying a good airplane doesn't require near as much attention as a motor car.”

“I would rather spend one day on Maui than 30 days in the hospital.”

“I had four sandwiches when I left New York. I only ate one and a half during the whole trip and drank a little water. I don't suppose I had time to eat any more because, you know, it surprised me how short a distance it is to Europe.”

“About forty miles away from Paris, I began to see the old trench flares they were sending up at Le Bourget. I knew then I had made it, and as I approached the field with all its lights, it was a simple matter to circle once and then pick a spot sufficiently far away from the crowd to land O.K.”

“I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.”

“Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.”

“Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength.”

“I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.”

“If I must fight, I'll fight; but I prefer not to spit at my enemy beforehand.”

“How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?”

“More and more, as civilization develops, we find the primitive to be essential to us. We root into the primitive as a tree roots into the earth. If we cut off the roots, we lose the sap without which we can't progress or even survive. I don't believe our civilization can continue very long out of contact with the primitive.”