Last Flight (Primary source)
Earhart’s posthumous 1937 journal, compiled from dispatches during her final around-the-world attempt, becomes an inadvertent elegy for American optimism. Her matter-of-fact accounts of technical challenges and geographical wonders now read as her last transmission before vanishing into mystery and legend.
“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“The time to worry is three months before a flight. Decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard. It retards reactions, makes one unfit. Hamlet would have been a bad aviator. He worried too much.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“It is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary sourceMore quotes by Amelia Earhart →
“I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it’s not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Never spend your money before you have it.”
— Thomas Jefferson Primary source