Richard Bach Quotes

You wait a lifetime to meet someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that someone, all along, has been you. ~ Richard Bach

We're different, we're the same. You thought you'd never find a word to say to a woman who didn't fly airplanes. I couldn't imagine myself spending time with a man who didn't love music. Could it be it's not as important to be alike as it is to be curious? Because we're different, we can have the fun of exchanging worlds, giving our loves and excitements to each other. You can learn music, I can learn flying. And that's only the beginning. I think it would go on for us as long as we live. ~ Richard Bach

How many of us count fictional characters, or those we've never met, among our closest friends? My hand's up. ~ Richard Bach

Has it ever happened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket ... the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror. ~ Richard Bach

That which most concerns and worries you - your survival - is the only certainty you have. ~ Richard Bach

Family is not necessarily made of blood, but of those you meet along the way. ~ Richard Bach

For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do ... ~ Richard Bach

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed. ~ Richard Bach

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. ~ Richard Bach

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours. ~ Richard Bach

What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game. ~ Richard Bach

If you argue for your limitations they are yours ~ Richard Bach

The simplest things are often the truest. ~ Richard Bach

The world is a dream, you say, and it's lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky."
"No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference? ~ Richard Bach

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

Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know. ~ Richard Bach

The first prerequisite of an advanced being is a sense of humor. ~ Richard Bach

The world's crazy, when it comes to beauty. ~ Richard Bach

You choose, you live the consequences. Every yes, no, maybe, creates the school you call your personal experience. ~ Richard Bach

You're a master when things go well, you're a victim when they go out of control. ~ Richard Bach

Happiness is a choice. It is not always an easy one. ~ Richard Bach

There is something to astrology for those who believe in astrology, as there is something to medicine for those who believe in medicine. Every system works when we give our heart to it. ~ Richard Bach

You teach best that which you need most to learn. ~ Richard Bach

To begin with, you've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself. ~ Richard Bach

I'm utterly convinced of the One-ness of Love and us as its perfect reflection. I am absolutely convinced that the world around us is a world of appearances and anyone who wants to can practice it. Change your thought and your environment will change. It's not instantaneous and sometimes we have to work very hard to make what we want happen. Working hard and holding that thought, it will change. ~ Richard Bach

Shop for security over happiness and we buy it at that price. ~ Richard Bach

It must happen to us all ... We pack up what we've learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within, we must dimly know that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security we'll ever know. ~ Richard Bach

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change. ~ Richard Bach

Gull Fletcher," they asked, "did the Magnificent Jonathan say, 'We are in truth the ideas of the Great Gull . . .' or was it, 'We are in fact the ideas of the Great Gull . . .'?" "Please. Call me Fletcher. Just Fletcher Seagull," he would reply, appalled that they would use a term of reverence upon him. "And what difference does it make, which word he used? Both are correct, we are ideas of the Great Gull . . ." But ~ Richard Bach

The only enlightened masters I know are the people that I see every day and the people that I've seen through my life who have had the understanding, at some level, that we're here to express love. ~ Richard Bach

We [people] have a teacher! The teacher is ourselves! We already know everything we need to know - our challenge is to discover that we know it. Turning to gurus, I think, we become guru-dependent, no different from drug-dependent, alcohol-dependent - needing an outside force to control our lives. ~ Richard Bach

Hate is love without enough data. ~ Richard Bach

We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks. ~ Richard Bach

The big thing about writing is three commands: Have fun. Don't think. Don't care. ~ Richard Bach

Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them, ~ Richard Bach

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play. ~ Richard Bach

I AM! YOU ARE! AND LOVE: IS ALL: THAT MATTERS! ~ Richard Bach

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. ~ Richard Bach

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves. ~ Richard Bach

He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all ~ Richard Bach

Amazing. You were so attached to it, and it still disappeared for you."
"Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high ... "
"Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it. ~ Richard Bach

Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs? ~ Richard Bach

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice? ~ Richard Bach

Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice. ~ Richard Bach

No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are. ~ Richard Bach

What'll be your biography? "At that point, life seemed pretty bleak. Then (insert your name) did a surprising thing... ~ Richard Bach

An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. ~ Richard Bach

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. ~ Richard Bach

The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren't destructable. ~ Richard Bach

I have chosen to parody the writing styles of Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield, Richard Bach, Lynn Andrews, and several other best-selling new age authors. ~ Frederick Lenz

Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp, cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality. But after so many times, even the shock wears off. ~ Richard Bach

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger. ~ Richard Bach

Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations - what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language to a different-speaking human being! ~ Richard Bach

Pain and adversity are powerful vehicles to promote personal growth. Nothing helps you learn, grow, and evolve more quickly. Nothing offers you as big an opportunity to reclaim more of your authentic power as a person. ~ Richard Bach

So this world, I think, and an indefinite number of other worlds of our creation, are also - we're here for fun; we're here for learning; we're here for remembering who we are, and who we are, are expressions of life so absolutely linked with the life that is, always was, always will be. ~ Richard Bach

When you dream, all the scenery, characters, events, perils, and outcomes are built from your own consciousness, the darks and oppressions as well as the delights. Same with the world awake, though it takes you longer to build it. ~ Richard Bach

We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. ~ Richard Bach

How easy it is to be compassionate when it's yourself you see in trouble. ~ Richard Bach

There was part of me listening that didn't think what I said was fiction. I was making up a true story. ~ Richard Bach

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! ~ Richard Bach

We all know those who draw their boundaries carefully and say, "I'm only human. Nobody's perfect. I accept my limitations." And we know others who take an opposite view and say, "I can do anything I choose to do. It is in my power to change the world." And those are the ones who most often change the world. ~ Richard Bach

The gull sees farthest who flies highest ~ Richard Bach

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. ~ Richard Bach

In spite of my study, I have learned. Every grand religion begins in light. Yet only hearts hold light. Pages cannot. I have paper in my hands. Give these words to the world and they will be loved and understood by those who already know their truth. The truth doesn't burn. The truth waits for anyone who wishes to find it ... only these pages will burn. At one with the stars ... with the pages and their love ... one with everything that is, that ever was or will be. One. ~ Richard Bach

Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions. ~ Richard Bach

Can miles truly separate you from friends ... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there? ~ Richard Bach

The only way to avoid all frightening choices is to leave society and become a hermit, and that is a frightening choice. ~ Richard Bach

choice in every moment. Where will I place my attention? What do I hold sacred? Whom can I love right now? -Fred Small We design our lives through the power of choices. -Richard Bach ~ Dr. Michelle Dawson

If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel. ~ Richard Bach

The only law is one which leads to freedom ~ Richard Bach

He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"
"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other. ~ Richard Bach

"What is my highest sense of right?" we can ask at any decision point in our lives and not worry about if this is going to lose us a lot of money or is this going to make us a lot of money or whatever. ~ Richard Bach

There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years. ~ Richard Bach

Sense of family is enormously important to me. In the larger sense, we're all of us family; we're all of us soulmates. ~ Richard Bach

I know there's a principle of spirit. It works without space-time. I am subject to that principle, in spirit and in belief of body. Learn how spirit works, a few simple rules, living a perfect spiritual life is easy. ~ Richard Bach

I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it? ~ Richard Bach

It's easy to live the expected and conventional. It's when you live the unexpected that you start having fun with your life. ~ Richard Bach

What I love doing is basically two things: I love flying airplanes and I love communication. ~ Richard Bach

It's not when you start that makes your success in the world, but when you quit. ~ Richard Bach

Fail at love, and the other tests don't matter. ~ Richard Bach

The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love? ~ Richard Bach

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-Worship And Label-Bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels ... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion. ~ Richard Bach

Thanks to you, I always am so happy. Now I want to give you all the happiness on your birthday. ~ Richard Bach

When I'm writing it's as if I'm the observer. It's as if that computer screen there -it used to be the typewriter - just kind of dissolves and there's this whirling tunnel of mist and there's a kind of proscenium arch, and then there are my characters, and they say what they say, and I laugh sometimes in surprise at what they say. ~ Richard Bach

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't. ~ Richard Bach

The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages. ~ Richard Bach

The image is a dream. The beauty is real. ~ Richard Bach

Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes. ~ Richard Bach

Flying prevails whenever a man and his airplane are put to a test of maximum performance. ~ Richard Bach

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one. ~ Richard Bach

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go. ~ Richard Bach

Rebuilding us. Isn't that what the spirit requires, when we climb over the wreckage of our lives, sometimes, we go on to make our lives our own affirmation? We are perfect expressions of perfect Love, here and now. There is no permanent injury. ~ Richard Bach

I take the paraglider to the mountain or I roll Daisy out of her hangar and I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam. ~ Richard Bach

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting. ~ Richard Bach

Build an inner place to protect your truth. ~ Richard Bach

I didn't crash anything! They said I hit the wires, Don! I didn't see them!" "That explains it. You're a master when things go well, you're a victim when they go out of control." He was laughing at me. ~ Richard Bach

Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another. ~ Richard Bach

Have you ever felt so at one with the world, with the universe, with everything that is, that you were overcome with love? That is reality. That is the truth. What we make of it is up to us, as the painting of the sunrise is up to the artist. In our world humanity has strayed from that love. It lives hatred and power struggles and manipulations of the earth itself for its own narrow reasons. Continue and no one will see the sunrise. The sunrise will always exist, of course, but people on earth will know nothing of it and finally even stories of its beauty will fade from our knowing. ~ Richard Bach

You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there. ~ Richard Bach

Isn't it strange how much we know
if only we ask ourselves
instead of somebody else. ~ Richard Bach