“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
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.
“It is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“Possibly that feature of aviation which may appeal most to thoughtful women is its potentiality for peace. The term is not merely an airy phrase. Isolation breeds distrust and differences of outlook. Anything which tends to annihilate distance destroys isolation, and brings the world and its peoples closer together. I think aviation has a chance to increase intimacy, understanding, and far-flung friendships thus.”
— Amelia Earhart Primary sourceMore quotes by Amelia Earhart →
“It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Dying is only bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much that it humiliates you.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Wine is a grand thing,” I said. “It makes you forget all the bad.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary sourceWorry Flying Risk Decisions Hamlet