“Mechanical wings allow us to fly, but it is with our minds that we make the sky ours.”

-William Langewiesche, American journalist and aviator, born 1955.

This quote is from the first page of the first chapter of William Langewiesche’s book Inside the Sky, and it summarizes what the rest of the chapter is about. Langewiesche is a pilot, and he spends the chapter explaining that although humans have the ability to fly, understanding our world from above takes some getting used to.[1] Humans are surface-dwellers, and our bodies and minds have evolved for this existence. An aerial view gives us a different perspective of our surroundings, and allows us to contemplate our environment in a different way than the surface perspective that we’re used to. In order to fully conquer the skies, we need to reconcile this difference in our minds, which is what Langewiesche is describing in the above quote.


[1]: Langewiesche, William. Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. 3.