Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed Slim, Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle, was an American aviator, author, inventor, military officer, explorer, and social activist. In 1927, at the age of 25, Lindbergh emerged from the virtual obscurity of a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo nonstop flight from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France. He flew the distance of nearly 3,600 statute milesin...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPilot
Date of Birth4 February 1902
CityDetroit, MI
CountryUnited States of America
We can so reconstruct society that it will be self-perpetuating instead of as now, self-exhaustive.
We are compelled to work more hours per day, receive less pay per hour, pay more for what we buy, and recieve less for what we sell. The consequence is that we must work harder and more hours per day than we should, and in the end have less than what is due to us as our part of the advantages, conveniences and opportunities resulting from advancing civilization.
Why should anyone think a white skin superior in evaluating the qualities of human life? I did not really admire a white skin so much myself. Did I not prefer the brown skin that came with exposure to the sun?
From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.
I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
All mentally well-balanced persons know that we are not governed by the true principals of social justice when we make the main aim of our social existence the gaining of money.
We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.
These phantoms speak with human voices . . . able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there . . . familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.
It may be interesting to note how many statesmen there are who believe that the cost of living can be reduced by making the people of other countries help to feed and clothe us.
I don't believe in taking unnecessary risks, but a life without risk isn't worth living.
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.
Is civilization progress? The challenge, I think, is clear; and, as clearly, the final answer will be given not by our amassing of knowledge, or by the discoveries of our science, or by the speed of our aircraft, but by the effect of our civilized activities as a whole have upon the quality of our planet's life-the life of plants and animals as that of men.
Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western European civilization.
God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.