Memorable quotes from the airline industry

These are some of the more memorable quotes from the airline industry as compiled by The Economist. Have a good read!

“If the Wright brothers were alive today Wilbur would have to fire Orville to reduce costs.” Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines

“We don't fall over ourselves if they say ‘my Granny fell ill’. What part of no refund don't you understand? You're not getting a refund so fuck off.” Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair
“A recession is when you have to tighten your belt; depression is when you have no belt to tighten. When you've lost your trousers—you're in the airline business.” Sir Adam Thomson, founder of British Caledonian

“The best thing we can do with environmentalists is shoot them. These headbangers want to make air travel the preserve of the rich. They are Luddites marching us back to the 18th century.” Michael O’Leary trumpets his green credentials

“If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them there myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver.” Michael O’Leary again

“Running an airline is like having a baby: fun to conceive, but hell to deliver.” CE Woolman, founder of Delta Air Lines

“The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.” Warren Buffett

“It takes nerves of steel to stay neurotic.” Herb Kelleher

“Think and act big and grow smaller, or think and act small and grow bigger.” Herb Kelleher

“You fucking academic eggheads! You don't know shit. You can't deregulate this industry. You're going to wreck it. You don't know a goddamn thing!” Robert Crandall, boss of American Airlines, to an unnamed Senate lawyer in 1971

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realises itself.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. And this law is the expansion of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. "I cannot," never accomplished anything; "I will try," has wrought wonders.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-ax, or of one impression of the spade with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

If you are not financially independent by the time you are forty or fifty, it doesn't mean that you are living in the wrong country or at the wrong time. It simply means that you have the wrong plan.

The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and then chew it.

Thought of the Day

Take a look at those two open hands of yours. They are tools with which to serve, make friends, and reach out for the best in life. Open hands open the way to achievement. Put them to work today.

Thought of the Day

One never learns by success. Success is the plateau that one rests upon to take breath and look down from upon the straight and difficult path, but one does not climb upon a plateau.

Thought of the Day

Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.

Thought of the Day

Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take OFF! But if you don't have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you.

Thought of the Day

To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court.