Wolfgang Langewiesche famous quotes

Get rid at the outset of the idea that the airplane is only an air-going sort of automobile. It isn't. It may sound like one and smell like one, and it may have been interior decorated to look like one; but the difference is - it goes on wings.
-- Wolfgang Langewiesche

#Airplane #Wings #Ideas

Flying is done largely with the imagination.
-- Wolfgang Langewiesche

#Imagination #Flying #Done

A fierce and monkish art; a castigation of the flesh. You must cut out your imagination and not fly an airplane but regulate a half-dozen instruments . . . .At first, the conflicts between animal sense and engineering brain are irresistibly strong.
-- Wolfgang Langewiesche

#Strong #Art #Airplane

Any young boy can nowadays explain human flight - mechanistically: " ... and to climb you shove the throttle all the way forward and pull back just a little on the stick. ... " One might as well explain music by saying that the further over to the right you hit the piano the higher it will sound. The makings of a flight are not in the levers, wheels, and pedals but in the nervous system of the pilot: physical sensations, bits of textbook, deep-rooted instincts, burnt-child memories of trouble aloft, hangar talk.
-- Wolfgang Langewiesche

#Children #Memories #Boys

Sometimes I watch myself fly. For in the history of human flight it is not yet so very late; and a man may still wonder once in a while and ask: how is it that I, poor earth-habitituated animal, can fly?
-- Wolfgang Langewiesche

#Animal #Men #Watches

God's irony: that in order to fight and defeat the threat of terrorism, we shall have to be clear about the principle of justice that allows us to understand what is evil in terrorism. And that principle of justice is the claim of justice that is inherent in every innocent human life. But if that claim was there in the Twin Towers, if it was there on the airplanes that those terrorists attacked, you explain to me why it is not there in the womb!

To an ant on the ground, an airplane probably looks like an ant.

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense." --Sam Seaborne, West Wing

There's a common misconception with sketch comedy that you just go up there and wing it, but it's written, and there really is order.

Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on too swift a wing.

What made me want to play guitar was that painting of Wings in concert in the gatefold of Wings Over America. It looked so exciting... I wanted to be part of it.

A beautiful blossom is a fleeting thing It stays for a moment and then takes wing: With special rays we catch it ere flight So all may enjoy the beautiful sight.

Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.

Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.

I was really intrigued by the idea of using live streams of data that's relevant to real people, and that would allow us to reflect and learn about ourselves.