The conversation between Fletcher and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is centered on why some have achieved more than others . . . are they divine . . . ahead of their times . . . Fletcher says, Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way most gulls fly. Poor Fletch. Don't you believe what your eyes are telling you? All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again
You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.
For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.
My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.
We're different, we're the same. You thought you'd never find a word to say to a woman who didn't fly airplanes. I couldn't imagine myself spending time with a man who didn't love music. Could it be it's not as important to be alike as it is to be curious? Because we're different, we can have the fun of exchanging worlds, giving our loves and excitements to each other. You can learn music, I can learn flying. And that's only the beginning. I think it would go on for us as long as we live.
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.
What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it What if I could meet a super-advanced ... what if a Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me.
I take the paraglider to the mountain or I roll Daisy out of her hangar and I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam.
Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can't see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that's not marked by boundaries, it's not a map. We're not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there's a reminder that are a lot worse things, and a lot greater rewards.
Flying prevails whenever a man and his airplane are put to a test of maximum performance.
Why fly? Simple. I'm not happy unless there's some room between me and the ground.
It had never gotten old for him, flying. Never gone boring. Every engine start was a new adventure, guiding the spirit of a lovely machine back into life; every takeoff blending his spirit with its own to do what's never been done in history, to lift away from the ground and fly.
Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.
Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!
Grief is no more necessary when we understand death than fear is necessary when we understand flying.
What I love doing is basically two things: I love flying airplanes and I love communication.
When you're flying, an airplane doesn't care who you are; it doesn't care how much money you make or don't make. All it cares about is: How well do you fly? How well do you know the airplane? How well do you know the sky?
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