Quotes about flying are interesting to explore, as they can provide insights into how different people view this activity. For some world explorers, flight is a means to an end, getting them where they need to go as quickly and efficiently as possible. For others, it’s an opportunity to see the world from a new perspective and experience the beauty of nature in a way that’s never possible on the ground. Whichever perspective you may hold, there’s no denying that flight has transformed the way we explore our planet.
Quotes About Flying
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
It’s impossible to explain creativity. It’s like asking a bird, ‘How do you fly?’ You just do.
Eric Jerome Dickey
A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.
Dalai Lama
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away, and exercise what’s been taught them.
Jonas Salk
Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?
Frida Kahlo
Facts are the air of scientists. Without them, you can never fly.
Linus Pauling
We take eagles and teach them to fly in information.
Wayne Calloway
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
Wilbur Wright
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.
Rumi
Some temptations cannot be fought. One must close one’s mind and fly from them.
A.J. Cronin
Tell them that as soon as I can walk, I’m going to fly!
Bessie Coleman
If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.
Toni Morrison
Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly.
Antonio Porchia
You begin to fly when you let go of self-limiting beliefs and allow your mind and aspirations to rise to greater heights.
Brian Tracy
My soul is in the sky.
William Shakespeare
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
John Muir
Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can fly.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Pilots are drawn to flying because it’s a perfect combination of science, romance and adventure.
Charles Lindbergh
It’s only when you’re flying above it that you realize how incredible the Earth really is.
Philippe Perrin
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where flight will take them.
Mark Nepo
Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
Amelia Earhart
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious.
And why
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? — it is the same the angels breathe.
Mark Twain
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin
I cannot describe the delight, the wonder and intoxication, of this free diagonal movement onward and upward, or onward and downward….The birds have this sensation when they spread their wings and go tobogganing in curves and spirals through the sky.
Alberto Santos-Dumont
Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying.
Neil Armstrong
Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Luciano De Crescenzo
But hopes are shy birds flying at a great distance, seldom reached by the best of guns.
John James Audubon
Man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.
Alphonse de Lamertine
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake
The fascination of flight can’t be expressed with words. But it really lies beyond the capabilities of human endeavor. Once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never be able to forget it.
Friedrich Oblessor
I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand… Adventure is a state of mind and spirit.
Jacqueline Cochran
What I like best about flying is the freedom it affords to navigate an ocean of air and see the earth from a wider perspective. I never tire of the beauty of the earth by day or the sky by night.
Chesley Sullenbeger
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.
Bill Gates
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table.
Marilyn vos Savant
Man must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.
Socrates
I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport, although that end is what we have all ostensibly been striving to attain.
Amy Johnson
Everyone loves to fly and flying underwater is even better than flying in air because there are things around you.
Graham Hawkes
Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes.
Charles Lindbergh
Flying without feathers is not easy: my wings have no feathers.
Plautus
When it’s played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams.
John Edgar Wideman
Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.
Pappy Boyington
Life science research can be done on multiple platforms. Since we have a very small number of people flying into space, the more people you have, the better.
Laurel Clark
You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
Amelia Earhart
A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Flying is hypnotic and all pilots are victims to the spell. Their world is like a magic island in which the factors of life and death assume their proper values. Thinking becomes clear because there are no earthly foibles or embellishments to confuse it.
Ernest K. Gann
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
William Golding
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.
Plato
Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it’s nothing.
Marlon Riggs
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?
Yip Harburg
A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.
Joseph Conrad
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
Walt Whitman
Why do I want to fly? Because half-way between the earth and sky, one seems to be closer to God. There is a peace of mind and heart, a satisfaction which walls can not give. When I see an airplane flying I just ache all over to be up there. It isn’t for a fad, or a thrill, or pride.
Margery Brown
If you are in trouble anywhere in the world, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.
Igor Sikorsky
There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.
Orson Welles
The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The way to fly is to go straight up…Such a machine (the helicopter) will never compete with the aeroplane, though it will have specialized uses, and in these it will surpass the aeroplane. The fact that you can land at your front door is the reason you can’t carry heavy loads efficiently.
Emile Berliner
Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
James Dickey
Prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable…after 50 years of flying I’m still learning every time I fly.
Gene Cernan
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 A. Lindbergh
To be able to rise from the earth, to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe—all this enlarges the human horizon.
Norman Cousins
The most beautiful dream that has haunted the heart of man since Icarus is today reality.
Louis Bleriot
If a bird is flying for pleasure, it flies with the wind, but if it meets danger it turns and faces the wind, in order that it may rise higher.
Corrie Ten Boom
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
Ernest Hemingway
Don’t do anything to stop a woman from flying; let fate take its course.
Amado Nervo
For the first time I was flying by jet propulsion. No engine vibrations. No torque and no lashing sound of the propeller. Accompanied by a whistling sound, my jet shot through the air. Later when asked what it felt like, I said, “It felt as though angels were pushing.
Adolf Galland
The blue distance, the mysterious Heavens, the example of birds and insects flying everywhere — are always beckoning Humanity to rise into the air.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Aviation is poetry…It’s the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words.
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Entranced by the flight of a raven, I watch its shadow move effortlessly against golden, shimmering granite. I long to be that free, flying above the cluttered world of normalcy, where so many are half alive.
Dean Potter
The desire to reach for the sky runs deep in our human psyche.
Cesar Pelli
It is as though we have grown wings, which thanks to Providence, we have learnt to control.
Louis Blériot
In the case of an airplane, speed is determined by the outcome of the conflict between thrust of the power and drag of the plane. So it also is with humans.
Jacqueline Cochran
As flying enters into everyday life, the dreams of centuries become actualities. One by one they take shape and become stepping-stones for other dreams.
Amelia Earhart
By the end of the 20th Century there will be a generation to whom it will not be injurious to read a dozen quire of newspapers daily, to be constantly called to the telephone… and to live half their time in a railway carriage or in a flying machine.
Max Nordau
Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.
Francis Bacon
Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death.
Alexander Chase
There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime’s learning experience. For the best pilots, flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than the others; that’s why they’re the best. Experience is everything. The eagerness to learn how and why every piece of equipment works is everything. And luck is everything, too.
Chuck Yeager
Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying in space.
Chris Hadfield
This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.
Alan Watts
Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery — the epitome of breaking into new worlds.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?… Did you ever hear music up there?… It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.
Dalton Trumbo
Nothing will ever equal that moment of exhilaration which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss.
Jacques Charles
Parting Words
The quotes we’ve shared about flying have been a reminder of how privileged we are to be able to explore the world. They’ve also inspired us to think about what our next adventure will be and given us some ideas for where in the world we want to go.
What’s your favorite quote about flying? Leave a comment below and let us know. We would love to hear from you!
P.S. If you enjoyed this, you might also like these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Wandering
- Quotes About Walking
- Quotes About Solo Travel
- Quotes About Life Direction
- Quotes About Exploration
Originally Published: November 16, 2022
✍️ Cusco, Peru
