Charles Lindbergh

It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?

Time is no longer endless or the horizon destitute of hope.

To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.

We must learn from the sermons of Christ, the wisdom of Laotzu, the teachings of Buddha.

We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.

Aviation constituted a new and possibly decisive element in preventing or fighting a war, and I was in a unique position to observe European aviation - especially in its military aspects.

We Americans are a primitive people... Americans seem to have little respect for the law or the rights of others.

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

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

More and more, as civilization develops, we find the primitive to be essential to us. We root into the primitive as a tree roots into the earth. If we cut off the roots, we lose the sap without which we can't progress or even survive. I don't believe our civilization can continue very long out of contact with the primitive.

I had four sandwiches when I left New York. I only ate one and a half during the whole trip and drank a little water. I don't suppose I had time to eat any more because, you know, it surprised me how short a distance it is to Europe.

I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.

If I must fight, I'll fight; but I prefer not to spit at my enemy beforehand.

Civilization must be based on life. We should never forget that human life was created in and for millions of centuries, was nourished by primitive wildness. We cannot separate ourselves from this ancestral background.

There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war.

It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany.

If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.