Quotes & Sayings About Parachutes

Minds, like parachutes, work only when open. — James Dewar

I always keep my mind open. For me, a mind has to work like like a parachute, works only if it's open. — Rickson Gracie

My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth. — Tahereh Mafi

Man has been thrown into the world. It had always made him think of Icarus and those other great tumblers, Ixion, Phaeton, Tantalus - all these jumpers without parachutes from a world of gods and heroes. — Cees Nooteboom

Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect. — Benny Hill

The scenes in the show were filmed with a crew of really excellent stunt jumpers, but we had the feel of the parachutes, so we could be more realistic in the roles. — Ken Curtis

During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died. — Sebastian Junger

I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life. — Sebastian Junger

I often say if men were meant to fly we would have been born with either feathers and wings or at the very least parachutes that pop out of our butts. — John Zakour

I once cured an amateur skydiver of acute acrophobia. Now you could say he was all right because he was able to jump, but you could also say he was not all right because he was so stoned he neglected to open his parachute. — Robert Preston

I was a section commander in the parachute regiment [in the British army]. — Scott Raab

In Italy the Coach is a paratrooper who jumps out of the plane but doesn't know if the parachute will open or not. — Claudio Ranieri

For me, I guess I'm the acting equivalent of somebody that jumps off buildings and parachutes. — Joaquin Phoenix

Minds, like parachutes, function better when open, but, like fists, they strike harder when closed. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

And putrefaction, and fills us with nausea and retching. The nights become quiet and the hunt for copper driving-bands and the silken parachutes of the French star-shells begins. Why the driving-bands are so desirable no one knows exactly. The collectors merely assert that they are valuable. Some have collected so many that they will stoop under the weight of them when we go back. — Erich Maria Remarque

There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle ... You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear. — Frank Borman

Business people get many undeserved prizes - golden parachutes and bonuses even when companies fail. I don't think people should get rewarded for screwing up. — Mo Ibrahim

Take our own company as an example: We're living proof, we jump with our own parachutes. — Jim Barksdale

Minds are like parachutes, they don't function unless they are open. — Philip C. Baridon

I no longer feel allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think that Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children's lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen. — Suzanne Collins

At 10,000 feet, the 3 parachutes would come out, a little lower the pressure of the atmosphere outside was greater than inside, and we could smell the salt air and it was very encouraging to return to earth. — Buzz Aldrin

In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight on a jumbo jet and then thrown out with a parachute into a foreign landscape without a map:
"There you are, the future patient, quietly progressing with other passengers toward a distant destination when, astonishingly (Why me?) a large hole opens in the floor next to you. People in white coats appear, help you into a parachute and - no time to think - out you go.
"You descend. You hit the ground ... But where is the enemy? What is the enemy? What is it up to? ... No road. No compass. No map. No training. Is there something you should know and don't?
"The white coats are far, far away, strapping others into their parachutes. Occasionally they wave but, even if you ask them, they don't know the answers. They are up there in the Jumbo, involved with parachutes, not map-making. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Where wealth and status are concerned, shit isn't supposed to be hard. Ivies are known for "grade inflation" - though there is a lot of work, the reward for a mediocre job at completing it is still usually an A. In any given corporation, the higher the role and pay, the less that person actually does. CEOs who get fired for sucking at their jobs and losing a shit-ton of money are often given multi-million dollar "golden parachutes." It was kinda the same with this frat; we were the best, so we did the least. — A.D. Aliwat

Mothers are the parachutes. — Jandy Nelson

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open. — Thomas Dewar

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. — Robert Fulghum

My heart is a parachute that has never opened in time. — Andrea Gibson

History (that list
of ballooning wishes, flukes,
bent times, plunges and mistakes
clutched like parachutes)
is rolling itself up in your head
at one end unrolling at the other. — Margaret Atwood

My habit of attacking Huns dangling from their parachutes led to many arguments in the mess. Some officers, of the Eton and Sandhurst type, thought it was 'unsportsmanlike' to do it. Never having been to a public school, I was unhampered by such considerations of form. I just pointed out that there was a bloody war on, and that I intended to avenge my pals. — James Ira Thomas Jones

Minds are like parachutes-not much good unless they are open. — Harvey MacKay

The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog's coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep's wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man's trouser cuff or the hem of a woman's skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement. — John Steinbeck

Then I am pushing through the crowd, just as I did before. Trying to shout out her name above the roar. I'm almost there, almost to the barricade when I think she hears me. Because just for a moment, she catches sight of me, her lips form my name.
And that's when the rest of the parachutes go off. — Suzanne Collins

Pussies [10w]
Pussies are like parachutes ~
they work best when wide open. — Beryl Dov

We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow. — Margaret Atwood

It was very difficult to control the descent. At a height of seven kilometres, I catapulted out of my capsule and parachuted down to Earth. I was very familiar with parachutes because I was a sky diver before. — Valentina Tereshkova

Minds, like parachutes, only function when they are open. — Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

Isn't that what I always think when I get The Poor Motherless Girl Look? Like I've been shoved out of the airplane without a parachute because mothers are the parachutes. — Jandy Nelson

I always wonder about raindrops.
I wonder about how they're always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It's like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn't seem to care where the contents fall, doesn't seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.
I am a raindrop.
My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab. — Tahereh Mafi