Airplane Quote by John McPhee

“I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes.”

John McPhee

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Airplane Class Floating Paper Paper airplanes Rooms Term Used

More by John McPhee

“For nonfiction projects, ideas are everywhere. They just go by in a ceaseless stream.”

John McPhee

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In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning.

John McPhee

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“I’d much rather watch people do what they do than talk to them across a desk.”

John McPhee

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“A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons, or whistles like a train but because it is absolute to what follows.”

John McPhee

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“If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments…

John McPhee

“Since most callers have until moments before been completely unaware that there are bears in New Jersey, there is often in their voices a component of alarm, up to and including terror. McConnell’s response is calmer than pavement. She speaks in tones that range from ho to hum. “Yes, there are bears in your area,” she says, and goes on…

John McPhee

“Incandescent carbon particles, by the tens of millions, leap free of the log and wave like banners, as flame. Several hundred significantly different chemical reactions are now going on. For example, a carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, coming out of the breaking cellulose, may lock together and form methane, natural gas. The methane, burning (combining with oxygen), turns into…

John McPhee

“If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.”

John McPhee

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Almost all Americans would recognize Anchorage, because Anchorage is that part of any city where the city has burst its seams and extruded Colonel…

John McPhee

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“The doctor listens in with a stethoscope and hears sounds of a warpath Indian drum. ”

John McPhee

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On a certain scale, it does look like I do a lot. But that’s my day, all day long, sitting there wondering when I’m going to be able to get started. And the routine of doing this six days a week puts a little drop in a bucket each day, and that’s the key. Because if you put a drop…

John McPhee

“There is no Weatherfax map on the Stella Lykes—only the barometer, the barographs, the teletypes from NOAA. The radar can see a storm, but that is like seeing a fist just before it hits you. When a storm is out there, somewhere, beyond the visible sky, the ship will let him know. “When you get close to a big storm,…

John McPhee

Explore all 57 John McPhee quotes

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The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is,…

Simone de Beauvoir

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I shoot in black and white, sometimes color, sometimes if it looks good I shoot out the window of the airplanes or whatever, anything…

Robert Barry

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I've jumped out of an airplane 34 times. I've dove 212 feet under water. I've done a lot of things that defied death.

Jesse Ventura

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I believe that anyone who flies in an airplane and doesn't spend most of his time looking out the window wastes his money.

Marc Reisner

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We live in a world where it has become politically correct to avoid absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a…

Anonymous

The way I see it, you can either work for a living or you can fly airplanes. Me, I'd rather fly.

Len Morgan

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I'm 17 years old. I'm not a straight-A student or anything. Even so, I figured out how to make an Internet that they can't wiretap. I figured out how to jam their person-tracking technology. I can turn innocent people into suspects and turn guilty people into innocents in their eyes. I could get metal onto an airplane or beat a…

Cory Doctorow

I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.

Billy Bob Thornton

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From computers to information technology to airplanes, it has been America's unique blend of republican government and free-market capitalism that has allowed us to…

George Nethercutt