Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.

Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.

Air power is new to all our countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it calls for readjustment everywhere.

Not long ago, when I was a student in college, just flying an airplane seemed a dream. But that dream turned into reality.

If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes.

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.

Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?