Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see .

It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant.

Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

I can't get used to the ease with which one covers the world today. It's no longer an effort--Pole--equator--oceans--continents--it's just a question of which way you point the nose of your plane. The pure joy of flight as an art has given way to the pure efficiency of flight as a science.... Science is insulating man from life -- separating his mind from his senses. The worst of it is that it soon anaesthetizes his senses so that he doesn't know what he's missing.

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

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.

God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

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?

[I] grew up as a disciple of science. I know its fascination. I have felt the godlike power man derives from his machines.