GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Wilbur Wright

There are 27 quotes matching Wilbur Wright in the collection:

Like all novices we began with the helicopter in childhood, but soon saw that the helicopter had no future, and dropped it. The helicopter does with great labor only what the balloon does without labor, and is no more fitted than the balloon for rapid horizontal flight. If its engine stops, it must fall with deathly violence, for it can neither glide like the aeroplane or float like the balloon. The helicopter is much easier to design than the aeroplane, but is worthless when done.

Wilbur Wright

Letter written in 1907. Quoted in the 1954 book Miracle at Kitty Hawk: The Letters of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery.

Wilbur Wright

Second paragraph of the first letter the brothers wrote to Octave Chanute, 13 May 1900.

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. This I conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to Octave Chanute, 13 May 1900.

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. The disease has increased in severity and I feel it will soon cost me an increased amount of money, if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field.

Wilbur Wright

Beginning of his first letter to Octave Chanute, 13 May 1900. The letter also included the prediction:

“If the plan will enable me to remain in the air for practice by the hour instead of by the second, I hope to acquire skill sufficient to overcome both these difficulties and those inherent in flight.”

Four days after receiving this extraordinary letter, what the Library of Congress has called “one of the most remarkable letters in the history of science”, Chanute wrote Wilbur a serious yet encouraging reply. In that 17 May 1900 letter, Chanute wrote he was, “quite in sympathy with your proposal to experiment”, and proceeded to offer detailed advice. They would exchange several hundred more letters over the next decade, a correspondence that only ended with Chanute’s death in May 1910.

The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively cannot take danerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to his father, 3 September 1900.

I am intending to start out in a few days for a trip to the coast of North Carolina in the vicinity of Roanoke Island, for the purpose of making some experiments with a flying machine. It is my belief that flight is possible, and while I am taking up the investigation for pleasure rather than profit, I think there is a slight possibility of achieving fame and fortune from it.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to his father, 3 September 1900.

All who are practically concerned with aerial navigation agree that the safety of the operator is more important to successful experimentation than any other point. The history of past investigations demonstrates that greater prudence is needed rather than greater skill. Only a madman would propose taking greater risks than the great constructors of earlier times.

Wilbur Wright

July 1901. First published as Die wagerechte Lage Während des Gleitfluges in Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen. Wilbur’s original unpublished English manuscript did not survive. This translation from The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

When gliding operators have attained greater skill, they can, with comparitve safety, maintain themselves in the air for hours at a time in this way.

Wilbur Wright

Some Aeronautical Experiments, presented to the Western Society of Engineers 18 September 1901.

If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.

Wilbur Wright

From an address to the Western Society of Engineers in Chicago, 18 September 1901.

Now, there are two ways of learning to ride a fractious horse: one is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast a while and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safer, but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger proportion of good riders. It is very much the same thing in learning to ride a flying machine.

Wilbur Wright

From an address to the Western Society of Engineers, Chicago, 18 September 1901.

We are thinking of building a machine next year with 500 sq.ft. surface, about 40 ft x 6 ft 6 inches. This will give us the oppotunity to work ou probems connected with the management of large machines both in the air and on the ground, such as starting, etc. If all goes well the next step will be to apply a motor.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to George Spratt, 29 December 1902.

Those who understand the real significance of the conditions under which we worked will be surprised rather at the length than the shortness of the flights made with an unfamiliar machine after less than one minute’s practice. The machine possesses greater capacity of being controlled than any of our former machines.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to Octave Chanute, from Kitty Hawk, 8 December 1903.

There is no sport in the world quite equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings. Compared with the motion of a jolting automobile is not flying real poetry?

Wilbur Wright

Private letter to the Italian soaring enthusiast Aldo Corazza, December 1905.

As to the distance we can travel, we do not regard twenty-four miles as the limit. The new machines will carry sufficient fuel for a five-hunded-mile trip.

Wilbur Wright

Quoted by Herbert N. Casson, At Last We Can Fly, in The American Magazine, volume 63, 1906.

It is a realization of a dream so many persons have had of floating in the air. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination.

Wilbur Wright

Quoted in Successful in Flying, the Wrights Guard Their Secret Well, but may have been reporter's paraphrase. New York Herald, 25 November 1906.

Considered as a sport, flying possesses attractions which will appeal to many persons with a force beyond that exercised by any of the similar sports, such as boating, cycling, or automobiling. There is a sense of exhilaration in flying through the free air, an intensity of enjoyment, which possibly may be due to the satisfaction of an inborn longing transmitted to us from the days when our early ancestors gazed wonderingly at the free flight of birds and contrasted it with their own slow and toilsome progress through the unbroken wilderness …

Once above the tree tops, the narrow roads no longer arbitrarily fix the course. The earth is spread out before the eye with a richness of color and beauty of pattern never imagined by those who have gazed at the landscape edgewise only. The view of the ordinary traveler is as inadequate as that of an ant crawling over a magnificent rug. The rich brown of freshly-turn earth, the lighter shades of dry ground, the still lighter browns and yellows of ripening crops, the almost innumerable shades of green produced by grasses and forests, together present a sight whose beauty has been confined to balloonists alone in the past. With the coming of the flyer, the pleasures of ballooning are joined with those of automobiling to form a supreme combination.

The sport will not be without some element of danger, but with a good machine this danger need not be excessive. It will be safer than automobile racing, and not much more dangerous than football. The motor flyers will always be somewhat expensive, as the best of materials and workmanship will be required in their construction, but there is a possibility that men will eventually learn to fly without motors, after the manner of soaring birds, which sail for hours on motionless wings. In such case the flyer would be so small and simple that the original cost would be very moderate, and the fuel expense done away with entirely. Then flying will become an every-day sport for thousands.

Wilbur Wright. Flying as a Sport — It’s Possibilities

Scientific American, 29 February 1908.

I’ve seen him! I’ve seen him! Yes, I have today seen Wilbur Wright and his great white bird, the beautiful mechanical bird. There is no doubt! Wilbur and Orville Wright have well and truly flown.

Le Figaro

11 August 1908.

See three other Le Figaro great aviation quotes.

There was something strange about the tall, gaunt figure. The face was remarkable, the head suggested that of a bird, and the features, dominated by a long, prominent nose that heightened the birdlike effect were long and bony… . From behind the greyish blue depths of his eyes there seemed to shine something of the light of the sun. From the first moments of my conversation with him I judged Wilbur Wright to be a fanatic of flight, and I had no longer any doubt that he had accomplished all he claimed to have done. He seemed born to fly.

Daily Mail newspaper

17 August 1908.

Don’t go out [flying] even for all the officers of the government unless you would go equally if they were absent. Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready. Be very cautious and proceed slowly.

Wilbur Wright

Letter to Orville about flying in front of crowds. After some technical discussion about the rudder, he added, “I can only say be extraordinarily cautious”. 25 August 1908.

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.

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