Pilots Quotes

The pilot channel is doing what was expected. It is abating dust and giving us an inkling of what the area will look like when it is restored . ~ John Wallace

Pilot season is always crazy because you audition for a million things, and really, in the end, it's not up to you. ~ Janina Gavankar

I've done a lot of pilots. A lot of shows. You're young and you do a job just because you know someone gave you a job. ~ John Slattery

I'm an Air Force officer first, a pilot second and then Nicole. The female part is last ... My job is to be the best right wingman that I can be. ~ Nicole Malachowski

I really loved Twin Peaks. When I saw the two-hour pilot, they screened it in the big theatre. I said, I don't know what is going to happen. I'm in this and I don't understand it. This is never going to sell. Who's going to watch this thing? ~ Sherilyn Fenn

To bear adversity with an equal mind is both the sign and glory of a brave spirit. ~ Francis Quarles

A song of despair


The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
Pablo Neruda

Values are like a pilot's flight plan . . . without them you're flying blind. ~ Frank Sonnenberg

I shall never forget my admiration for that German pilot, who single handed, fought seven of us for ten minutes. I saw him go into a fairly steep dive and so I continued to watch, and then saw the triplane hit the ground and disappear into a thousand fragments, for it seemed to me that it literally went into powder. ~ James McCudden

Oftentimes, you read these pilot scripts that come through for American work, and they don't sing to you. I've got to be honest, not many of them ignite the flame or give you that burning feeling of, 'Oh, God, I really want to be a part of this.' ~ Antony Starr

It was a unique childhood, to say the least. My father was born in Patiala to refugee parents and was a part of the Indian Air Force. The talented few amongst the Air Force pilots are made test pilots. Test pilots are best suited to look at the space programme as they are trained to expect the unexpected. ~ Kapil Sharma

This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don't do, you don't believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane. ~ Chuck Yeager

As an Asian American at pilot season you take whatever there is. ~ Reggie Lee

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. ~ Tom Robbins

Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot. ~ Michaela Conlin

To be a bodyguard is to be a kamikaze pilot. Dedicated. ~ Mr. T

I've done 10 or 11 pilots for network television, which is ridiculous. ~ Dave Chappelle

When I was getting close to being accepted for pilot training, I was allowed to get in a jet airplane. I sat there looking at all those switches and dials and I got the distinct feeling that I was sitting in the nose of bomb. I realized my fantasies of flying and fighting were just that - fantasies. ~ Morgan Freeman

My name's not Jerry," he grumbled, raising his head.
"I know, but it's the only way I can get your attention, kid."
"What did you want?" Japhet muttered.
"I said, do you have a girl?"
Japhet squinted at him and rubbed his nose.
"A girl?" he asked.
"Yeah. You do know what a girl is, don't you? Female version of the male? Whole lot prettier. Sweet temperament. Heard they're great for marrying. Thought a handsome, half starved and nearly dead Jew like you would have one of those by now. ~ Jack Lewis Baillot

This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Disney has been such a big part of my early career. I've done two pilots for Disney, and I've been working with them since I was 16, and I just turned 21. ~ Spencer Boldman

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew,
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue. ~ Alfred The Great

He thought about history, the hidden human anxieties behind momentous events. The tiny trivial things that were probably bothering Einstein or Darwin or Newton as they formulated their theories: arguments with the landlady, maybe, or concern over a blocked fireplace. The pilots who bombed Dresden, fretting over a phrase in a letter from back home: What did she mean by that? Or what about Columbus, when he was sailing toward the New Land ... who knows what was on his mind? The last words spoken to him by an old friend, perhaps, a person not even remembered in history books ... ~ Michel Faber

Why don't we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Can't stop thinking about if and when I die. For now I see that "if" and "when" are truly different cries for "if" is purely panic and "when" is solemn sorrow and one invades today while the other spies tomorrow. ~ Twenty One Pilots

To be a great pilot you have to make a pact with the devil, but don't let him swallow you up. ~ Ernst Udet

There's always some pressure to achieve something. You make a pilot, but you don't know if you're going to get a show. And then, you make a show, but you don't know if people are going to watch. And then, people watch, but you don't know if enough people are watching. ~ Charles Halford

It's scary to sign a six-year contract for something that you don't necessarily know about. And yet I did that most every year. I've done a lot of failed pilots. ~ Lizzy Caplan

The sovereign people, legislators, and reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would this precaution be, if there were nothing to gain by it? No one would think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the theatre and the opera. The nation was still aping the kings: like them it wished to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers. Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the nation did not control the list of livings; that was in the hands of its agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to thwart the will of their gracious sovereign. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I did a pilot for HBO, called One Percent, that they didn't end up picking up, but it was a pretty intense and dramatic piece. ~ Donal Logue

And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own. ~ Richard Bach

The pilot says, "Where do you want to go?" and that's always a rather existential question, because naturally I think a bit about where I want to go, but of course I can't really know where I want to go, in advance. I know it when I see it. ~ Michael Light

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence. ~ Annie Dillard

No one can realize how substantial the air is, until he feels its supporting power beneath him. It inspires confidence at once. ~ Otto Lilienthal

I was on automatic pilot; ideas for gadgets kept coming, fed by a force of energy flowing through me and around me. ~ Trevor Baylis

A short, glorious life in service of a greater good - say, the life of the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the pilots in the Battle of Britain, of whom Winston Churchill said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few,' - that is worth praising. But for glory alone? I think not. ~ Tim O'Reilly

It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat. – Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968 ~ Mark Kurlansky

Ships are obliged to take on harbor or river pilots - who provide specialized local navigation - when they approach a port, but in the canal, a Suez crew is also obligatory. The crew members are there in case the ship needs to be moored during the canal transit, but this rarely happens. ~ Rose George

He tells me of experiments his team is developing to monitor the spark of recognition in the brain as people look at online ads. The test focus on a brain wave called P300. (The U.S. Navy has run similar tests to see how pilots distinguish friends from foes in the air.) If a P300 wave heats up within a fraction of a second of a subject's seeing an ad, the Tacoda team will make the case that the viewer has not only looked at the spot but has processed it mentally. The next step? Figuring out which type of people process certain types of ads. Like other Numerati in a wide range of industries, Dave Morgan in scrutinizing humans and searching for hidden correlations. What do we do, he asks, that might predict what we'll do next? ~ Stephen Baker

Your good thoughts, good words and good deeds alone will be your intercessors. Nothing more will be wanted. They alone will serve you as a safe pilot to the harbour of Heaven, as a safe guide to the gates of paradise. ~ Zoroaster

In most instances, the driving force behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character - or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them. ~ Walt Disney

Why does every plane have two pilots? Really, you only need one pilot. Let's take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it. ~ Michael O'Leary

At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat. ~ George Santayana

My first movie was this independent that I did on the Erie Canal in 1995, called Erie, that I don't know if you could even get, actually with Felicity Huffman. And then from that I did this film that was eventually called The Broken Giant later that fall. And then I kind of started getting into doing pilots. ~ Will Arnett

I never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it. ~ John L. Phillips

I am the best bodyguard, because I'll take a bullet, I'll take a stab wound, I'll take a hit upside the head; I'm like a kamikaze pilot. ~ Mr. T

Look for some peace organization to join. It will look small at first, and pitiful and helpless, but that's how movements start. That's how the movement against the Vietnam War started. It started with handfuls of people who thought they were helpless, thought they were powerless. But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power. When workers go on strike, huge corporations lose their power. When consumers boycott, huge business establishments have to give in. When soldiers refuse to fight, as so many soldiers did in Vietnam, so many deserters, so many fraggings, acts of violence by enlisted men against officers in Vietnam, B-52 pilots refusing to fly bombing missions anymore, war can't go on. When enough soldiers refuse, the government has to decide we can't continue. So, yes, people have the power. If they begin to organize, if they protest, if they create a strong enough movement, they can change things. ~ Howard Zinn

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow. ~ Fred Brooks

The words from The Microlight Pilot's Handbook hammered in my temples. 'It is better to be on the ground wishing to God you were in the air, than in the air wishing to God you were on the ground. ~ Antony Woodward

Turbulence: This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You'll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, "Folks, we're encountering a little turbulence." Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean water buffalo organs off the windshield. ~ Dave Barry

...I stand looking at the aircraft, trying in vain to remember all the theoretical lore which i was supposed to have absorbed in school. The effort is discouraging. ~ Ernest K. Gann

In 1945, when the male soldiers started coming back home from Europe, she and all the other women pilots that had served as WASPs during the war were unceremoniously told to go home and never received a dime or even thanks from the government. ~ Fannie Flagg

Many people don't know about the power of good feelings, and so their feelings are reactions or responses to what happens to them. THey have their feelings on automatic pilot, instead of deliberately taking charge of them. When something good happens, they feel good. When something bad happens, they feel bad. They don't realize that their feelings are the cause of what is happening to them. As they react with negative feelings to something that has happened, they give out more negative feelings, adn they receive back more negative circumstances. ~ Rhonda Byrne

However, the ability to control attention is not simply a measure of intelligence; measures of efficiency in the control of attention predict performance of air traffic controllers and of Israeli Air Force pilots beyond the effects of intelligence. ~ Daniel Kahneman

I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own. ~ Muhammad Ali

Greenberg wanted to give his pilots an alternate identity. Their problem was that they were trapped in roles dictated by the heavy weight of their country's cultural legacy. They needed an opportunity to step outside those roles ... and language was the key to that transformation. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

While you're doing fine, there's some people and I
Who have a really tough time getting through this life
So excuse us while we sing to the sky. ~ Twenty One Pilots

And since the mind is of a man one part,
Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,
And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;
And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
But in the least of time is left to rot,
Thus mind alone can never be, without
The body and the man himself, which seems,
As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught
Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined:
Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds. ~ Lucretius

One of the things that did intrigue me about when I read the pilot - because I had not read the books before doing the show - was the mystery aspect of it. I didn't feel that it was just a crime-based story. It really does have that mystery element, and it felt like a throwback to other shows in the past that had a bit more of that. There was something iconic about it. The fact that it's set in Boston gave it a feeling that was different to me. So, I am definitely more of a fan of mysteries than I am of a circular crime-based genre. ~ Sasha Alexander

Who was the best pilot I ever saw? You're lookin' at 'im. ~ Gordon Cooper

I remembered what Mr. Hall had told me when I first asked him for a lesson: the kids who watch planes are destined to be pilots. ~ Jennifer Echols

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. ~ Igor Sikorsky

Some time ago we heard a strange story. The pilot of a small plane said that he had been caught in a one hundred fifty mile gale, which held his plane perfectly still. The motor was roaring, he claimed, but the plane was not moving. "It was weird," he said , "to be going one hundred fifty miles an hour and yet not be going anywhere at all." ~ James Keller

First of all, I don't think they have to go that high. That is not necessary, to be that high in the air. I think they're showing off, those pilots. I think we could just go really fast just a few feet off the ground. Just high enough to miss the animals. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

Not all dreams need to be realized ... Fred finally achieved his pilot's license but couldn't afford to fly a plane. I wrote incessantly but published nothing. Through it all we held fast to the concept of the clock with no hands. Tasks were completed, sump pumps manned, sandbags piled, trees planted, shirts ironed, hems stitched, and yet we reserved the right to ignore the hands that kept on turning. Looking back, long after his death, our way of living seems a miracle, one that could only be achieved by the silent synchronization of the jewels and gears of a common mind. ~ Patti Smith

As for the claim that drone 'pilots' are not engaged in the extinguishing of human life via video games, the military's own term for its drone kills - 'bug splat,' which happens to be the name of a children's video game - and other evidence negates that. ~ Glenn Greenwald

The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law. ~ Michael Badnarik

The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best. ~ Chuck Yeager

My husband has some very interesting hobbies, and through him, I've learned to fly and earned my pilot's license. Together, we fly all over the United States. Since our children are all grown now, we also travel a great deal in Europe, but we take commercial flights because our plane is not really equipped to make transatlantic flights. ~ Betsy Byars

Marriage is like a row boat: it fits two, it doesn't work on auto-pilot and it's very difficult to have sex in. ~ Dana Gould

A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don't care about their passengers' comfort. It's not like they've bought tickets. ~ Lee Child

I've had a private pilot's license for years and flown all round the U.K. and over to France. ~ Michael Gambon

We realized what a spot we were in. We had to deliver the goods, or else there wouldn't ever be another chance for women pilots in any part of the service. ~ Cornelia Fort

An excellent weapon and luck had been on my side. To be successful, the best fighter pilot needs both. ~ Adolf Galland

On September 6, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon … A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs … The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a skeleton crew of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. … Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots; in fact, nearly the entire crew had perished … the ship, Victoria, … had departed three years earlier. No one knew what had become of her … Despite the journey's hardships, Victoria and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done before. By sailing west until they reached the East, and then sailing on in the same direction, they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the globe ~ Laurence Bergreen

If there was one thing I'd learned, it was that you were responsible for your own ship. You had to look after the engine and make sure the plane was in order and ready to be flown. You were in charge of plotting your course. When you were in the pilot's seat, it was your hand on the throttle, no one else's. If your oil ran out or you lost your engine or the engine caught fire and you had to crash, you were the one saving yourself. No one else could do it for you. ~ Jennifer Niven

The duty of the fighter pilot is to patrol his area of the sky, and shoot down any enemy fighters in that area. Anything else is rubbish. ~ Manfred Von Richthofen

When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky - they let me off ~ Bruce Dickinson

There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot. ~ Chuck Yeager

Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly. ~ Cory Lidle

Somebody said that carrier pilots were the best in the world, and they must be or there wouldn't be any of them left alive. ~ Ernie Pyle

After investigating the UFO phenomenon all over the world, after studying thousands of pages of released government documents, and interviewing eyewitnesses and insiders, including generals, intelligence officers, cosmonauts and astronauts, military and commercial pilots, I do not have the shadow of a doubt anymore that we are indeed visited by extraterrestrial intelligences. The evidence just does not allow another conclusion. ~ Michael Hesemann

Death is the handmaiden of the pilot. Sometimes it comes by accident, sometimes by an act of God. ~ Albert Scott Crossfield

The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that. ~ Alan Shepard

When people asked me what I did for a living, I told them I make pilots. They thought I was a stewardess. ~ Suzanne Somers

It is not that the average is never useful. Averages have their place. If you're comparing two different groups of people, like comparing the performance of Chilean pilots with French pilots - as opposed to comparing two individuals from each of those groups - then the average can be useful. But the moment you need a pilot, or a plumber, or a doctor, the moment you need to teach this child or decide whether to hire that employee - the moment you need to make a decision about any individual - the average is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, because it creates the illusion of knowledge, when in fact the average disguises what is most important about an individual. ~ Todd Rose

As we do at such times I turned on my automatic pilot and went through the motions of normalcy on the outside, so that I could concentrate all my powers on surviving the near-mortal wound inside. ~ Sonia Johnson

I've often said that there's no one thing that I do or have done that is particularly unique. There have been a lot of other authors who were in the military. There have been a few others who were pilots. There have certainly been a lot of other people who were in politics or served congressional staffs. ~ L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Most of the pilots I choose do not have high-concept ideas, so for me it's not the idea as much as the execution of the idea, and if the idea, like you take a bar in Boston, that's not a high-concept idea. But if it's executed well, it makes a great show. ~ James Burrows

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' ends with the spaceship lands and Richard Dreyfuss' character best on, but a bunch of pilots and sailors from the 1940s get off. You kind of wanted to know what happened next. ~ Jonathan Nolan

Pilots are not the threat. ~ John Pistole

Why do airline pilots always call passengers "folks"? I don't usually take umbrage at generic terminology
I'm one of those forward-thinkers who believes that "man" encompasses the whole darned race
but at whatever 0'clock in the mornning. I thought it would be nice to be called sometihng that suggested unwashed masses a little less. ~ C.E. Murphy

Prep for docking," said the pilot's voice over the intercom. "You're off watch, and I'm not, you barves ... " "Shower, food, sleep," said Darman, prioritizing. Atin shook his head. "Food, shower, sleep." "Sleep," said Niner. "Then more sleep." They looked at Corr. "Glorious revolution, then installing a military junta," he said. Etain stared, not at all sure about his hidden depths, but he laughed. "Or a nice big plate of minced roba patties. I'm easy. ~ Karen Traviss

In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that which gazes upon all things." And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

During this period Steen and Fox were killed trying a single-engine instrument approach at Moline. Then Campbell and Leatherman hit a ridge near Elko, Nevada. In both incidents the official verdict was 'pilot error,' but since their passengers, who were innocent of the controls, also failed to survive, it seemed that fate was the hunter. As it had been and would be. ~ Ernest K. Gann

Pilots track their lives by the number of hours in the air, as if any other kind of time isn't worth noting. ~ Michael Parfit

Any girl who has flown at all grows used to the prejudice of most men pilots who will trot out any number of reasons why women can't possibly be good pilots ... The only way to show the disbelievers, the snickering hangar pilots, is to show them. ~ Cornelia Fort