GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
ORVILLE WRIGHT

Although a general invitation had been extended to the people living within five or six miles, not many were willing to face the rigors of a cold December wind in order to see, as they no doubt thought, another flying-machine not fly. The first flight lasted only twelve seconds, a flight very modest compared with that of birds, but it was, nevertheless, the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight, had sailed forward on a level course without reduction of speed, and had finally landed without being wrecked.

Orville and Wilbur Wright

The Wright Brothers’ Aeroplane, The Century Magazine, September 1908.

Flying Machine Soars 3 Miles in Teeth of High Wind Over Sand Hills and Waves at Kitty Hawk on Carolina Coast

Steadily it pursued its way, first tacking to port, then to starboard, and then driving straight ahead. “It's a success,” declared Orville Wright to the crowd on the beach after the first mile had been covered. But the inventor waited. Not until he had accomplished three miles, putting the machine through all sorts of maneuvers en route, was he satisfied. Then he selected a suitable place to land, and gracefully circling drew his invention slowly to earth, where it settled, like some big bird, in the chosen spot.

“Eureka,” he cried, as did the alchemists of old.

Virginian-Pilot newspaper

Much embellished ‘report’ of the first 12 second flight. Published 18 December 1903.

The exhilaration of flying is too keen, the pleasure too great, for it to be neglected as a sport. It seems to me that its use will be somewhat similar to the automobile, as far as pleasure goes; that is, that people will have aeroplanes for pleasure runs, for fresh air, and for sight-seeing — perhaps even for touring, when starting devices are either carried along, or to be found readily at stopping points. There will be races, I suppose, and contests, and many of them will be beneficial as stimulative to inventive progress, just as races and contests have improved the automobile. But the greatest development in a sporting line, as I see it, will be for the pure pleasure of flying.

Orville Wright

The Future of the Aeroplane, Country Life in America magazine, January 1909.

I believe that my course in sending our Kitty Hawk machine to a foreign museum is the only way of correcting the history of the flying machine, which by false and misleading statements has been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution. In its campaign to discredit others in the flying art, the Smithsonian has issued scores of these false and misleading statements. In a foreign museum this machine will be a constant reminder of the reasons for its being there, and after the people and petty jealousies of the day are gone, the historians of the future may examine the evidence impartially and make history accord with it. Your regret that this old machine must leave the country can hardly be so great as my own.

Orville Wright

Letter to the Smithsonian, regarding sending The Flyer to the Science Museum, London, England, in 1928. My granddad, William English, saw The Flyer there and told me about it.

The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall.

Attributed to Orville Wright

It became the weary answer to questions of how wings work.