The Wright Brothers

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.

The airplane is the nearest thing to animate life that man has created. In the air, it can recover its balance before the pilot is aware that it has been lost.

I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success.

We had to go ahead and discover everything ourselves.

The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe.

What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery.

We were not foolish enough to think we could invent a flying machine outright. We expected to have to build up to it.

The difficulties which obstruct the pathway to success in flying machine construction are of three general classes...

It is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.

The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.

We had taken up aeronautics merely as a sport. We reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it.

The balancing of a flyer is maybe not so much of a mystery as it is sometimes thought to be.

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.

We could not understand that there was anything about a bird that could not be built on a larger scale and used by man.

The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

The only birds that are available for our study are those which are too heavy to be kept up in the air by mere floating.

We had to experiment and test every idea that seemed to have any promise.

There is no sport equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings.

If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it.