Wright Brothers Quotes

“Thousands of men had thought about flying machines and a few had even built machines which they called flying machines, but these were guilty of almost everything except flying.”

“What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery.”

“After these years of experience I look with amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a new and untried machine under such circumstances.”

“It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.”

“If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.”

“Man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery.”

“There is no sport equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost if you can conceive of such a combination.”

“Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready.”

“I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various sizes after the style of Cayley's and Penaud's machines. My observations since have only convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practicable. It is only a question of knowledge and skill just as in all acrobatic feats... I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then if possible add my mite to help on the future workers who will attain final success.”

“The only birds who talk are parrots, and they are not birds of high flight.”

“He has been victimized and distorted by the written word ever since his first flight in 1903, when a reporter swiped a telegraphic message telling his father, the Bishop, that the machine had flown, and, knowing no fact but that, wrote what seemed good to him — a long, richly embroidered piece of imaginative prose describing in detail a flight of a virtuosity to which no plane has yet attained.”

“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 and knowledge and skill which will finally lead to accomplished flight.”

“The boys of the Wright family are all lacking in determination and push. None of us has, as yet, made particular use of the talent in which he excels other men.”

“He was too sure he would fly to be excited. He says he had only one thrill in aviation: the moment when the bare idea of flight came to him as he lay abed at night as a sleepless small boy.”

“Higher, Orville, higher!”