I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

The essence of life, I concluded, did not lie in the material. It penetrated, but was not bound to, the physical world of science.

[I] grew up as a disciple of science. I know its fascination. I have felt the godlike power man derives from his machines.

Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks.

What makes human power erupt like a volcano? What destroy's it? The civilizations of Rome, Greece, Egypt, China were all eruptions from a human core.

While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.

Life is 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.