Flying Machines Quotes:

Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird.

- Neil Armstrong

topic: Bird, Sailing, Flying, Flying Machines

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

- Lord Kelvin

topic: Science, Air, Flying, Famous Last Words, Crazy Ideas

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.

- Simon Newcomb

topic: Distance, Future, Airplane, Flying Machines

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

- Lord Kelvin

source: Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

topic: Numbers, Quality, Matter, Measuring, Physical Science

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

- Lord Kelvin

source: Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

topic: Science, Numbers, Kind, Mathematical Proof, Mathematics And Science

I imagine a future aircraft, which will take off vertically, fly as usual, and land vertically. This flying machine should have no moving parts. This idea came from the huge power of cyclones.

- Henri Coanda

topic: Moving, Land, Ideas, Cyclones, Moving Parts

Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?

- Joseph LeConte

topic: Future, Self, Flying, Flying Machines

It may be that the invention of the aeroplane flying-machine will be deemed to have been of less material value to the world than the discovery of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, or the perfection of the telegraph, or the introduction of new and more scientific methods in the management of our great industrial works. To us, however, the conquest of the air, to use a hackneyed phrase, is a technical triumph so dramatic and so amazing that it overshadows in importance every feat that the inventor has accomplished.

- Waldemar Kaempffert

topic: Air, Discovery, Perfection, Flying Machines, Telegraph

Every flying machine has its own unique characteristics, some good, some not so good. Pilots naturally fly the craft in such a manner as to take advantage of its good characteristics and avoid the areas where it is not so good.

- Neil Armstrong

topic: Unique, Flying, Machines, Flying Machines, Unique Characteristics

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

- Bill Gates

topic: Flying Machines

There is no basis for the ardent hopes and positive statements made as to the safe and successful use of the dirigible balloon or flying machine, or both, for commercial transportation or as weapons of war.

- George W. Melville

topic: War, Successful, Flying, Flying Machines

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.

- Thomas A. Edison

topic: Years, Two, Flying, Flying Machines

To the possible enquiry as to the probable character of a successful flying machine, the writer would answer that in his judgment two types of such machines may eventually be evolved: one, which may be termed the soaring type, and which will carry but a single operator, and another, likely to be developed somewhat later, which may be termed the journeying type, to carry several passengers, and to be provided with a motor.

- Octave Chanute

source: Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

topic: Character, Successful, Two, Operators, Flying Machines

Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.

- Octave Chanute

source: Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

topic: Distance, Airplane, Successful, Flying Machines, Foreseen

Can you imagine any better example of divine creative accomplishment that the consummate flying machine that is a bird? The skeleton, very flexible and strong, is also largely pneumatic - especially in the bigger birds. The beak, skull, feet, and all the other bones of a 25-pound pelican have been found to weigh but 23 ounces.

- Guy Murchie

source: Guy Murchie (2016). “Song of the Sky”, p.220, Pickle Partners Publishing

topic: Strong, Skulls, Feet, Flying Machines, Pelicans

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

topic: Flying, Machines, Stuck, Leonardo, Flying Machines

The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our modern steam ships. . . it seems safe to say that such ideas are wholly visionary and even if the machine could get across with one or two passengers the expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could use his own yacht.

- William Henry Pickering

topic: Ideas, Two, Flying, Flying Machines

Victor Vigny: It is like the old fairy tale. The boy saves the princess; they fall in love. He invents a flying machine - along with his dashing teacher, of course. They get married and name thier firstborn after the aforementioned dashing teacher. Conor: I don't recall that fairy tale from the nursery. Victor Vigny: Trust me, It's a classic.

- Eoin Colfer

topic: Teacher, Falling In Love, Princess, Dashing, Flying Machines

The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers.

- Lawrence Hargrave

topic: Hard Work, People, Flying, Scarce, Flying Machines

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.

- Emma Goldman

topic: Hate, People, Joy, Dynamite, Flying Machines

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

topic: Flying, Generations, Machines, Railway, Flying Machines

The artificial intelligence approach may not be altogether the right one to make to the problem of designing automatic assembly devices. Animals and machines are constructed from entirely different materials and on quite different principles. When engineers have tried to draw inspiration from a study of the way animals work they have usually been misled; the history of early attempts to construct flying machines with flapping wings illustrates this very clearly.

- Maurice Wilkes

source: "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 4, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

topic: Inspiration, Animal, Wings, Misled, Flying Machines

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.

- Edward Abbey

source: Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.164, Macmillan

topic: Technology, Eagles, Ravens, Limestone, Flying Machines

These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a child's toy made of paper.

- Henri Coanda

topic: Children, Airplane, Perfection, Flying Machines

We don't have the capability today to put a human being in space of any kind, shape or form, which is absolutely, totally unacceptable when we got the greatest flying machine in the world sitting down at Kennedy in a garage there with nothing to do.

- Gene Cernan

topic: Space, Flying, Sitting Down, Flying Machines

One: There is a low limit of weight [of about] 50 pounds beyond which it is impossible for an animal to fly. Two: The animal machine is far more effective than any we can hope to make. Three: The weight of any machine constructed for flying, including fuel and engineer, cannot be less than three or four hundred pounds. Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?

- Joseph LeConte

topic: Animal, Self, Two, Flying Machines

My objective is and has been for years to make the lightest and most compact flying machine that would carry me at 25 or 30 miles per hour for 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour. Current events show this is not at all an ambitious project. Want of an elementary knowledge of oil machines baulks me and causes much misdirected effort. I doubt my ability to acquire that knowledge, and feel like a fireman trying to hew out a donkey pump...

- Lawrence Hargrave

topic: Adventure, Years, Oil, Fireman, Flying Machines

Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.

- Lawrence Hargrave

topic: Ideas, Roots, Design, Workmanship, Flying Machines

I have had the feeling that a properly constructed flying-machine should be capable of being flown as a kite; and conversely, that a properly constructed kite should be capable of use as a flying-machine when driven by its own propellers.

- Alexander Graham Bell

topic: Flying, Feelings, Machines, Flying Machines, Propeller

May there not be methods of using explosive energy incomparably more intense than anything heretofore discovered? Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings-nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke? Could not explosives even of the existing type be guided automatically in flying machines by wireless or other rays, without a human pilot, in ceaseless procession upon a hostile city, arsenal, camp or dockyard?

- Winston Churchill

source: Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.220, Da Capo Press

topic: Block, War, Cities, Hostile, Wireless