The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.
With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe.
My writing, like everything I do, comes profoundly from my heart. I believe that if you follow your heart you will be successful in one way or another. Old-fashioned as that might sound, the philosophy is true.
I can make just such ones if I had tools, and I could make tools if I had tools to make them with.
Remember, I am not trying to orbit the earth. It is a simple elevator ride for 20 minutes.
A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast.
It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.
Let it be understood, in the first place, that a science fiction story must be an exposition of a scientific theme and it must be also a story.
I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success.
We estimated that we could make one of four cylinders with 4 inch bore and 4 inch stroke, weighing not over two hundred pounds, including all accessories.
My imagination completely controls me, and forever feeds the fire that burns with dark red light in my heart by bringing me the best dreams. I've always had a wild imagination, a big heart and a tortured soul so I feel that dark fantasy, love and horror are in my blood.
I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner. I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good.
Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive.
The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall.
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.
Isn't it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so we could discover them!
When I write I simply follow my heart. And my flights of fantasy. It is not done with a conscious effort. I'm continually inspired and write reflexively.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.
The fact that the great scientist believed in flying machines was the one thing that encouraged us to begin our studies.
With twelve horse power at our command, we considered that we could permit the weight of the machine with operator to rise to 750 or 800 pounds, and still have as much surplus power as we had originally allowed for in the first estimate of 550 pounds.
I appreciate all of the attention I get in my career. I am a loner and live a rather secluded life so sometimes I do get overwhelmed, but I am always very appreciative of everything, and honored.
We could hardly wait to get up in the morning.
No data on air propellers was available, but we had always understood that it was not a difficult matter to secure an efficiency of 50% with marine propellers.
I've always found it easy and natural and, more importantly, necessary to articulate thoughts and feelings, and fierce emotions, through the written word. Fantasy and horror came to me when I was very young.
What the human mind can conceive and believe it can accomplish.
In just six weeks from the time the design was started, we had the motor on the block testing its power.
It is normal for me to wake and find myself writing in the dark... or to be out of my tomb, caught in an unearthly world, alive with the images that haunt me.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Man is still the greatest miracle and the greatest problem on this earth.
One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet.
We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one hundred feet north of the new building.
We were then satisfied that, with proper lubrication and better adjustments, a little more power could be expected. The completion of the motor according to drawing was, therefore, proceeded with at once.
Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
A sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of the track, or a little over 120 feet from the point at which it rose into the air, ended the flight.
The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center.
When the machine had been fastened with a wire to the track, so that it could not start until released by the operator, and the motor had been run to make sure that it was in condition, we tossed a coin to decide who should have the first trial. Wilbur won.
No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.
The ability to do this so quickly was largely due to the enthusiastic and efficient services of Mr. C.E. Taylor, who did all the machine work in our shop for the first as well as the succeeding experimental machines.
In the earliest days, this was a project I worked on with great passion because I wanted to solve the Defense Department's problem: it did not want proprietary networking and it didn't want to be confined to a single network technology.
In our gliding experiments we had had a number of experiences in which we had landed upon one wing, but the crushing of the wing had absorbed the shock, so that we were not uneasy about the motor in case of a landing of that kind.
Never, never listen to anybody that try to discourage you.
When the motor was completed and tested, we found that it would develop 16 horse power for a few seconds, but that the power rapidly dropped till, at the end of a minute, it was only 12 horse power.
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
Yet in all those cases I finally steeled myself to seize the opportunity, and find a way to muddle through and eventually conclude that I had, in fact, chosen the right path, as risky as it seemed at the time.
A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body.
As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up.
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
We can't live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, we're all doomed.
I don't mind being compared to Whitney, there are people miles worse to be compared to.
Yet we still see continuous reports of bugs.
Working long hours being single helps because your time is yours. Once you have a family your time isn't all yours anymore. Most of the Mac team, we were in our mid-20's, most of us were single, and we were able to essentially devote our lives to it.
Wedge felt my effort wasn't good enough for the Cleveland Indians. But the Dodgers are just fine with my effort and I'm perfectly alright with that.
We decided to place the motor to one side of the man, so that in case of a plunge head first, the motor could not fall upon him.
Of course, I've done small company things, too, but most of them have been nonprofit organizations, such as the Internet Society, and I'm on the board of a number of small companies.
Nobody can be successful unless he loves his work.
I expect that the entertainment industry will have gone through its own convulsion in the same way the telecom industry will have gone through its.
Here is God's purpose -- for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.
Grinch had so many people in make up - virtually everybody. We had about 100 people a day for five months. And every day we would use 100 sets of appliances.
People need to be exposed to what the various problems are in various parts of the business. And you can become isolated from that in a large company.
To me the synthesizer was always a source of new sounds that musicians could use to expand the range of possibilities for making music.
There is nothing like playing for the team you grew up rooting for.
You have a perfect right to use your imagination as you will in developing the principles, but the fundamental scientific theory must be correct.
Before leaving camp in 1902 we were already at work on the general design of a new machine which we proposed to propel with a motor.
Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity.
I started focusing all my time on being an Apple II hobbyist, dropped out of grad school to go to work for Apple in August of '79.
I started creating games in 1979 and got my first real programming job at Origin Systems in 1987. I am completely self-taught, no school.
So one of the most important things we can do in the industry is make sure that the threat of cyberattacks is minimized as much as possible.
Prediction by analogy -creativity - is so pervasive we normally don't notice it.
Of course, you do have to get accustomed to being satisfied a little bit at second-hand by people who actually do some of the key work.
An impression has gone abroad that I am engaged in forming societies. This is a very great mistake, which I feel bound to correct.
As someone who craves the fetal position, I empathize with this sentiment. I'm just so glad I took the risk so early on in life.
It's always kind of a shock the first time you see a movie that you worked on to see what's really inside the edit. And how much of it, you know?
I'm getting tired of answering the same questions every day.
In almost every survey of consumers, they say they don't mind spending money. What they hate is the shopping experience.
''If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.
If you need to understand it to make policy, you should turn first to people who are scientists and engineers for factual information.
In those days I was a grad student in computer science and I liked to get to the bottom of all the systems I worked on, but you weren't allowed to.
I published on the web about 60 anecdotes about the development of the Mac in time for the Mac's 20th birthday in 2004. And that led to a book.
But I am delighted to be a Dodger, I grew up a Dodger fan and now my dreams have really come true.
Because when these DDOS attacks swamp access lines, then filtering at the other end doesn't help.
Before leaving for our camp at Kitty Hawk we tested the chain drive for the propellers in our shop at Dayton, and found it satisfactory.
I could never accept findings based almost exclusively on mathematics.
Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.