CHARLES LINDBERGH QUOTES
American aviator, author, & inventor (1902-1974)
Individuals are custodians of the life stream -- temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Of Flight and Life
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?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Aviation, Geography, and Race", Reader's Digest, November 1939
There's one thing I wish to get straight about this flight. They call me "Lucky," but luck isn't enough. As a matter of fact, I had what I regarded and still regard as the best existing plane to make the flight from New York to Paris. I had what I regard as the best engine, and I was equipped with what were in the circumstances the best possible instruments for making such efforts. I hope I made good use of what I had.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
interview with New York Times correspondent in Paris shortly after completing the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, May 22, 1927
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?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
after visiting a German concentration camp, attributed in The New York Times, April 20, 1980
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?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Autobiography of Values
Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, 1927
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh
Peace is a virgin who dare not show her face without Strength, her father, for protection.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Aviation, Geography, and Race", Reader's Digest, November 1939
I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
We (that's my ship and I) took off rather suddenly. We had a report somewhere around 4 o'clock in the afternoon before that the weather would be fine, so we thought we would try it.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
New York Times, May 23, 1927
I believe that for permanent survival, man must balance science with other qualities of life, qualities of body and spirit as well as those of mind -- qualities he cannot develop when he lets mechanics and luxury insulate him too greatly from the earth to which he was born.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
speech at the Annual Wright Dinner at the Aero Club of Washington, 1949
When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Wartime Journals
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.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"A Letter from Lindbergh", Life Magazine, July 4, 1969
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero
It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy -- for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
journal entry, July 21, 1944
When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
The Spirit of St. Louis
Life -- a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Is Civilization Progress?", Reader's Digest, July 1964
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Is Civilization Progress?", Reader's Digest, July 1964