Quotes from Charles Lindbergh

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.

Why shouldn't I fly from New York to Paris? I have more than four years of aviation behind me. I've barnstormed over half of the 48 states. I've flown my mail through the worst of nights.

What kind of man would live a life without daring? Is life so sweet that we should criticize men that seek adventure? Is there a better way to die?

I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many -- myself and humanity in flux.

Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality.

As civilization advances, man grows unconscious of the primitive elements of life; he is separated from them by his perfection of material techniques.

Whatever a man imagines he can attain, if he doesn't become too arrogant and encroach on the rights of the gods.

All mentally well-balanced persons know that we are not governed by the true principals of social justice when we make the main aim of our social existence the gaining of money.

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?

Democracy can only spring from within a nation itself, only from the hearts and minds of its people.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength.

The greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

History has recorded nothing so dramatic in design, nor so skillfully manipulated, as this attempt to create the National Reserve Association, or the Federal Reserve.

To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.

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

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

The remedy for our social evils does not consist so much in changing the system of government as it does in increasing the general intelligence of the people so that they may learn how to govern.

I am shocked at the attitude of our American troops. They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the ordinary decencies of life.

Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples.

Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.

There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.

There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war. There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.

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

We must learn from the sermons of Christ, the wisdom of Laotzu, the teachings of Buddha.