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

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.

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.

Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.

The life of an aviator seemed to me ideal. It involved skill. It brought adventure. It made use of the latest developments of science. Mechanical engineers were fettered to factories and drafting boards while pilots have the freedom of wind with the expanse of sky. There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God.

I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

Life's values originate in circumstances over which the individual has no control.