Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur)
First powered flight
Sayings by Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur)
I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.
The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall.
We could hardly wait to get up in the morning.
No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
The airplane is a crazy idea, but I don’t care.
The only bird that could speak told us what it knew, but we didn’t understand its language.
The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their dim terrestrial captivity, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space…
It is a pleasure to be able to inform you that the machine has been a success.
The course of the experiment was not exactly according to calculations, but was a success nevertheless.
The machine has been working very nicely and we have been making several flights each day.
We were much pleased with the general performance of the machine.
We have not been able to get any very good pictures, as the camera was not very good.
The machine was not built for speed, but for stability.
The greatest danger in flying is the ground.
The fact that the machine has not failed in any material part is a source of great satisfaction.
We have been out almost every day experimenting, and have made about 100 flights.
The aeroplane is not an invention, but a discovery.
Success in inventing depends on the close observation of nature.
The problem of flight is a problem of equilibrium.