GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Victor Hugo

There are 5 quotes matching Victor Hugo in the collection:

Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him,
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.

Victor Hugo

Be Like the Bird, Songs of Dusk, 1836. There are several English translations. In original French:

Soyez comme l’oiseau, posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop frêles,
Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
Sachant qu’il a des ailes!

Today the balloon has been judged, and found wanting … To be torn from the ground like a dead leaf, to be swept along helplessly in a whirlwind, this is not true flying. And how do we achieve true flight? With wings! … For the dream of flight to become the fact of aviation, we have only to accomplish a small and relatively simple technical breakthrough: to construct the first true ship of the air [le premier navire] …

Whoever you are, reading this declaration, lift up your heads! What do you see above you? You see clouds and you see birds. Well then, these are the two fundamental systems of aviation in operation. The choice is right in front of your eyes. The cloud is the balloon. The bird is – the helicopter!

Victor Hugo

Leter to Nadar, 1863. Quoted in 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning.

It will bring the immediate, absolute, instantaneous, universal and perpetual abolition of all frontiers, everywhere … The old Gordian knot of gravity will finally be untied … Armies will vanish, and with them the horrors of war, the exploitation of nations, the subjugations of populations. It will bring an immense and totally peaceful revolution. It will bring a sudden golden dawn, a brisk flinging open of the ancient cage door of history, a flooding in of light. It will mean the liberation of all mankind.

Victor Hugo

Letter on flight, 1864. ‘It’ was the balloon. Quoted in 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning.

I believe, Sir, in all progress. Air navigation is consecutive to ocean navigation; from water man must pass to air. Wherever creation is breathable to him, man will penetrate creation. Our only limit is life. Wherever the column of air whose pressure keeps our machine from bursting ceases, man must stop. But he can, must and will go that far, and he will. You prove it. I take the greatest interest in your useful and valiant perpendicular journeys. Your ingenious and bold companion, Mr. W. de Fonvielle, has, like Mr. Victor Meunier, the superior instinct of true Science. I, too, would have a superb taste for scientific adventure. Adventure in fact, hypothesis in idea - these are the two great processes of discovery. Of course, the future lies in aerial navigation, and the duty of the present is to work for the future. You are fulfilling this duty. I, solitary but attentive, follow you with my eyes and shout: Courage!

Victor Hugo

Letter sent in reply to balloonist Gaston Tissandier, Hauteville house, 9 March 1869.

One would have to be a pinhead not to recognise the huge significance of what has been achieved. Paris is surrounded, blockaded, blotted out from the rest of the world! – and yet by means of a simple balloon, a mere bubble of air, Paris is back in communication with the rest of the world!

Victor Hugo

Letter to Nadar, 1870. Quoted in 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning.

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