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
Charles Lindbergh quotes about
Shut your eyes and you will know what I mean by thought entombed in darkness. Light comes through the senses, and not only through the sense of sight. When you see without feeling, you are still partly blind; you lack the inner light that brings awareness. Awareness requires the interplay of every faculty, the use of your entire being as an eye.
After reading ... accounts ... of minor accidents of light, it is little wonder that the average man would far rather watch someone else fly and read of the narrow escapes from death when some pilot has had a forced landing or a blowout, than to ride himself. Even in the postwar days of now obsolete equipment, nearly all of the serious accidents were caused by inexperienced pilots who where then allowed to fly or attempt to fly-without license or restrictions about anything they could coax into the air.
Then what am I - the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.
Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality.
A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them?
Man has risen so far above all other species that he competes in ways unique in nature. He fights by means of complicated weapons; he fights for ends remote in time.
Decades spent in contact with science and its vehicles have directed my mind and senses to areas beyond their reach. I now see scientific accomplishments as a path, not an end; a path leading to and disappearing in mystery.
I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many -- myself and humanity in flux.
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.
Individuals are custodians of the life stream -- temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams.
My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.
I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?
Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?
God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.