Bertrand Piccard Quotations

In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainability.

I'm learning kite surfing. It's a little surfboard you have on your feet with straps, and you have a big kite like a power glider in the air that pulls you. You don't need waves to move, and it makes a big spray of water as you go.

What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

Very often, human beings are living like on autopilot, reacting automatically with what happens. What interests me about the life of an explorer is you are in the unknown; you are out of your habits.

People put limitations on their creativity, believing they have to rely on what they know and what they have done.

Before achieving a dream, you need to make very little steps... People don't understand that when you want to make a big dream you have a lot of fastidious little things you have to do.

I came up with idea of a solar airplane flying around the world with no fuel - that would be a beautiful message in terms of technology, the energy of the future and the environment.

When I was a child, I saw my father diving to the deepest point in the ocean with the U.S. Navy.

A movie I must have seen 10 times is 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' It's an old movie, but still such a beautiful message. If I had only one film I could take on my computer on a desert island, I would take 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.'

My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean... For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.

I am with the angels and just completely happy.

The way the public sees it is this. If we don't leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don't succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it's because it was easy and anyone could have done it.

Nothing can prevent us from another day and night, and the myth of perpetual flight.

Pioneering spirit should continue, not to conquer the planet or space ... but rather to improve the quality of life.

Welcome to those who believe in the power of dreams and who would like to join me in my exploration of life.

We know that dreams fuel innovation.

Adventure is something out of the usual pattern, a point at which you cannot avoid confronting the unknown, so that you have to dig inside yourself to find the courage and resources to deal with what may lie ahead, and to succeed.

If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled only by solar energy, let no one claim that it is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air-conditioning systems, and computers. This project voices our conviction that a pioneering spirit with political vision can together change society and bring about an end to fossil fuel dependency.

The pioneering spirit is less about thinking up new ideas, as ridding ourselves of dogmas and habits that hold us captive in thinking.