American aviator, author, & inventor (1902-1974)
Shall we now give up the independence we have won, and crusade abroad in a utopian attempt to force our ideas on the rest of the world; or shall we use air power, and the other advances of modern warfare, to guard and strengthen the independence of our nation?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
speech, August 29, 1941
What the German has done to the Jew in Europe, we are doing to the Jap in the Pacific.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
journal entry, July 21, 1944
My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
It was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of men -- where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same time.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
thoughts after his first parachute jump, The Spirit of St. Louis
I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into the cockpit and, minutes later, a black dot, fall off the wing two thousand feet above our field. At almost the same instant, a white streak behind him flowered out into the delicate, wavering muslin of a parachute -- a few gossamer yards grasping onto air and suspending below them, with invisible threads, a human life, a man who by stitches, cloth, and cord, had made himself a god of the sky.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1971
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty.... This is our modern danger ... it may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Aviation, Geography, and Race", Reader's Digest, November 1939
The growing knowledge of science does not refute man's intuition of the mystical. Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or in time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses.... The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"The Wisdom of Wilderness", Life Magazine, December 22, 1967
The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
journal entry, August 26, 1938
Well, I made it.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
comment after completing the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, special cable to the New York Times, May 22, 1927
I live only in the moment in this strange unmortal space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
By day, or on a cloudless night, a pilot may drink the wine of the gods, but it has an earthly taste; he's a god of the earth, like one of the Grecian deities who lives on worldly mountains and descended for intercourse with men. But at night, over a stratus layer, all sense of the planet may disappear. You know that down below, beneath that heavenly blanket is the earth, factual and hard. But it's an intellectual knowledge; it's a knowledge tucked away in the mind; not a feeling that penetrates the body. And if at times you renounce experience and mind's heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
I can't get used to the ease with which one covers the world today. It's no longer an effort--Pole--equator--oceans--continents--it's just a question of which way you point the nose of your plane. The pure joy of flight as an art has given way to the pure efficiency of flight as a science.... Science is insulating man from life -- separating his mind from his senses. The worst of it is that it soon anaesthetizes his senses so that he doesn't know what he's missing.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
letter to his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Lindbergh
Now, all that I feared would happen has happened. We are at war all over the world, and we are unprepared for it from either a spiritual or a material standpoint. Fortunately, in spite of all that has been said, the oceans are still difficult to cross; and we have the time to adjust and prepare.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
journal entry, December 11, 1941
I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many -- myself and humanity in flux.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
The forces of Hannibal, Drake and Napoleon moved at best with the horses' gallop or the speed of wind on sail. Now, aviation brings a new concept of time and distance to the affairs of men. It demands adaptability to change, places a premium on quickness of thought and speed of action.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Aviation, Geography, and Race", Reader's Digest, November 1939
We talk about spreading democracy and freedom all over the world, but they are to us words rather than conditions. We haven't even got them here in America, and the farther we get into this war the farther we get away from democracy and freedom. Where is it leading us to, and when will it end? The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
journal entry, December 11, 1941