”You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
René Daumal Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidean and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, 1952.
“What good pilots consistently do is perfect their foundational skills. They practice — they live — on airmanship. It’s courtesy, consistency, and core competency.”
Darren Pleasance, new President and CEO of AOPA, in Pursuit of Excellence, AOPA PILOT magazine March 2025.
“The attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which IS art.”
“Like that of Ulysses, each of our lives is a miniature Odyssey, going to new places, seeing new things, understanding new ideas, and each day penetrating the biggest unkown of all: tomorrow. For each of us it should be, and can be, an exciting voyage. Buen Viaje!”
Neil Armstrong, 2011. The picture is from his last public presentation at the first Starmus Festival on the island of Tenerife, 24 June 2011. The quote is from his submission to the 2014 book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.
“I want to live everyday all days as hard as I can. We party hard, we love hard, we jump hard because we’re reminded way too often that it can end like that.
We’re very aware of how precious life is. What a gift it is. So we use it. It’s not up on a shelf still in its bubble wrap. Ours is all beat up and thrown in the corner. It’s good. You should use something that you cherish.”
Jimmy Pouchert, interview at the very end of the 2024 move Fly. He died BASE jumping in 2021.
