Skunk Works Quotes & Sayings

Ben R. Rich, the ex-president of the famous "Skunk Works," Lockheed-Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP) group, revealed the truth just before he died. In an alumni speech at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1993, he said, "We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity . . . Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do. — Len Kasten

A skunk works does a totally different job. It's a group of people looking for a better hill to climb. — Peter H. Diamandis

I watched wealthy men and their wives and dates dancing and playing cards and making deals: I will admire you exactly as much, no more or less, as you admire me. I will love you in the strictest moderation. — Helen Oyeyemi

Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do God's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails. — Edward McKendree Bounds

I walked out into the living room and Travis smiled, not the reaction I expected at all.
You ... are beautiful. — Jamie McGuire

A lot of people believe that you don't need to know the history and that creates newness. I disagree: we should always be informed and then destroy it. — Louise Wilson

Listen, smile, agree, then do whatever you were going to do anyway. — Robert Downey Jr.

Lewis Mumford was not a planner, but he wrote eloquently of planning. It was a difficult task. Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention. — Richard White

Enlightenment, the great mysterious state of mind, is contentment, or freedom from suffering. How then do we measure happiness? We measure it in smiles, in the openness of our hearts, in generosity, in gratitude and compassion towards others, and in the steadiness of our contentment. — Andrew Furst

Back in the 1950s, there was a top-secret program code-named SUNTAN being conducted at a top-secret facility called Skunk Works. Its objective? To develop a liquid-hydrogen-powered spy plane. Because liquid hydrogen is incredibly volatile, early experiments were conducted inside a bomb shelter with eight-foot-thick walls. — Annie Jacobsen

I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit. — Alexander McCall Smith