I Live Only In The Moment In

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.

Science, Freedom, Beauty, Adventure: What More Could You Ask Of Life? Aviation Combined All The Elements I Loved. There Was Science In Each Curve Of An Airfoil, In Each Angle Between Strut And Wire, In The Gap Of A Spark Plug Or The Color Of The Exhaust Flame. There Was Freedom In The Unlimited Horizon, On The Open Fields Where One Landed. A Pilot Was Surrounded By Beauty Of Earth And Sky. He Brushed Treetops With The Birds, Leapt Valleys And Rivers, Explored The Cloud Canyons He Had Gazed At As A Child. Adventure Lay In Each Puff Of Wind.

I May Be Flying A Complicated Airplane, Rushing Through Space, But In This Cabin I'm Surrounded By Simplicity And Thoughts Set Free Of Time. How Detached The Intimate Things Around Me Seem From The Great World Down Below. How Strange Is This Combination Of Proximity And Separation. That Ground - Seconds Away - Thousands Of Miles Away. This Air, Stirring Mildly Around Me. That Air, Rushing By With The Speed Of A Tornado, An Inch Beyond. These Minute Details In My Cockpit. The Grandeur Of The World Outside. The Nearness Of Death. The Longness Of Life.

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 Have Seen The Science I Worshiped, And The Aircraft I Loved, Destroying The Civilization I Expected Them To Serve.