The Wright Brothers Quotes
"If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio." - Wilbur Wright
"The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks."
"The best judges of bicycles and bicycle construction in the city. Without their assistance in spreading the fame and praise of the Van Cleve, we could not have hoped to have pressed it to its present high position in popular estimation."
"One ship drives east and another drives west With the self-same winds that blow. 'Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"The enjoyment of Lorin’s children coming in and out grew only greater for both Wilbur and Orville. Their niece Ivonette would say of Orville in particular that he never seemed to tire of playing with them, and that if he ran out of games, he would make candy for them."
"All soarers, but especially the buzzard, seem to keep their fore-and-aft balance more by shifting the center of resistance than by shifting the center of lift," Wilbur wrote.
"Wilbur’s observations of birds in flight had convinced him that birds used more "positive and energetic methods of regaining equilibrium" than that of a pilot trying to shift the center of gravity with his own body."
"If a buzzard be soaring to leeward of the observer, at a distance of a thousand feet... the cross section of its wings will be a mere line when the bird is moving from the observer but when it moves toward him the wings appear broad."
"The Wrights were "two of the workingest boys" ever seen, "and when they worked, they worked. They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing."
"The view from the top of Big Hill was spectacular in all directions."
"It was October 19, and after nearly four years of concentrated study and effort by the brothers, it proved a day of days."
"We found it perfectly safe and comfortable, except for the flying sand."
"They had hoped to learn much of value there and they had, more even than expected."
"Without having our pet theories completely knocked in the head by the hard logic of experience, and our own brains dashed out in the bargain."
"They packed for home certain they would return."
"Plans for a new glider were under way, their concentration on the problems still to be solved."
"We don’t hear anything but flying machine from morning till night."
"The Wright brothers, it appears, kept working as hard as ever at the shop, possibly as a way of coping with the tragedy."
"The speech Wilbur delivered would be quoted again and again for years to come."
"The birds’ wings are undoubtedly very well designed indeed, but it is not any extraordinary efficiency that strikes with astonishment but rather the marvelous skill with which they are used."
"The work was unlike anything the brothers had ever undertaken and the most demanding of their time and powers of concentration."
"By late December, their experiments finished and feeling the pressure of economic necessity, the brothers turned to the production of the next season’s bicycles."
"They knew exactly the importance of what they had accomplished. They knew they had solved the problem of flight and more."
"The successful tests flown with the reconstructed wings took place on August 8."
"We had seen the glider fly without an engine, and when these boys put an engine in it, we knew that they knew exactly what they were doing."
"It was only a flight of twelve seconds, and it was an uncertain, wavy, creeping sort of a flight at best, but it was a real flight at last."
"What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history."
"It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith."
"The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power."
"If such sensational and tremendously important experiments are being conducted in a not very remote part of the country, on a subject in which almost everybody feels the most profound interest, is it possible to believe that the enterprising American reporter, who, it is well known, comes down the chimney when the door is locked in his face . . . would not have ascertained all about them and published . . . long ago?"
"The fascination with birds continued no less than ever."
"The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars."
"History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home, but the making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until many years later."
"God’s free air, that extends all over the earth, and perhaps miles above us, is our training field. . . ."
"In such cases the man at a distance only does harm by trying to give instructions which do not fit the case."
"We will spend the winter getting some more machines ready for the spring trade. Then we will probably put out a sign, ‘Opening day, all goods below cost.’"
"I have been real good over here. We have been in a lot of the big churches and haven’t got drunk yet."
"Dazzling white sand dunes, almost monumental, to the right, and to the left in the distance more sand dunes, and a glimpse of the sea, and the Carolina sun, pouring down out of a clear blue sky, immersed everything in a shimmer and glare."
"[We were] all seasoned campaigners in the field of unexpected events, but for all that, this spectacle of men flying was so startling, so bewildering to the senses in that year 1908, that we all stood like so many marble men."
"Early the morning of May 14 the onlookers were treated to a sight never before seen anywhere—two men in a motor-powered flying machine."
"Days as hot as summer had returned to the Outer Banks, and that afternoon, when Wilbur went up alone, the heat was nearly unbearable."
"I was watching with the field glass. The machine turned on end—the front end—with the tail in the air. There was a big splash of sand—such a cloud that I couldn’t see from where I was exactly what had happened."
"The plane, however, was a total wreck, and thus as Wilbur announced, the tests had come to an end."
"During little more than a week of test flights at Kill Devil Hills, he and Orville had been the subjects of far more attention and praise in the press than they had ever known."
"The voyage to Le Havre proved uneventful—smooth but foggy much of the time."
"The French press, aware of Wilbur’s return, had a 'tendency' to be hostile."
"As for themselves, Wilbur wrote, 'The first thing is to get some practice and make some demonstrations, then let the future be what it may.'"
"But where? On June 8, he and Wilbur went by train to Le Mans, a quiet, ancient town of some 65,000 people on the Sarthe River."
"One evening in the elegant Louis XVI salon of Berg’s apartment, Wilbur sat for an interview with a young French aviation journalist, François Peyrey."
"Wilbur arrived back in Le Mans close to midnight, June 16, and settled in at the Hôtel du Dauphin in a room overlooking the main square, the Place de la République."
"Saturday, August 8—the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new century—was as fine as could be hoped for."
"The spirit was of a summer outing, the whole scene as different, as far removed from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as could be imagined."
"That summer Saturday in Le Mans, France, not quite eight years into the new twentieth century, one American pioneer had at last presented to the world the miracle he and his brother had created on their own."
"The crash. [He] rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road. Nothing I have ever seen is comparable."
"With her young nephew Milton much improved in health and her classes at the high school soon to resume, Katharine was feeling more herself."
"The excitement at home in Dayton was like nothing in memory, and at 7 Hawthorn Street especially, as Katharine recorded in a long Sunday letter to Wilbur."
"A new song, 'Il Vole' ('He Flies'), had become a popular hit."
"Wilbur’s days at Le Mans had never been so full."
"In the months since Orville’s accident, he had become an even bigger sensation."
"The crowds kept coming to Le Mans by train and automobile and from increasingly farther distances."
"A military band provided appropriately rousing music and, as the guests read in the menus at each of their places, the evening’s sumptuous feast included jambon d’York aux épinards (ham with spinach), faisan rôti aux croutons (roasted pheasant with croutons), salade Russe (Russian potato salad), and Glace a lananas (pineapple ice cream)."
"But she had already made up her mind. 'Brother and I are coming over as soon as we can,' she wrote only a few days later."
"In Paris, where new toys being sold were part of the 'streets sights' of the Christmas season."
"It is quite a wonderful toy, for even the smallest details have been perfectly carried out."
"He was sorry to have missed Christmas at home, he wrote his father the next day."
"For many, even veteran travelers, the prospect of crossing the Atlantic in the middle of winter would have kept them happily safe and comfortable at home."
"Never in their lives had the three Wrights been among so many who, by all signs, had little to do but amuse themselves."
"The modesty of the Wright brothers is a source of a good deal of comment."
"Who was it who gave them new hope, when they began to think the problem [of flight] impossible?"
"It crowns anew the efforts of mankind. It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved."
"But above all there is a sermon in their life of endeavor which cannot be preached too often."