Admiral Richard E. Byrd

“A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.” (Richard E. Byrd)

Richard Evelyn Byrd was born in Virginia on 25 October 1888 (and died in 1957). He was a U.S. naval officer, pioneer aviator, and explorer, best known for his explorations of Antarctica using airplanes and other modern technical resources. He claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole by air.

However, his claim to have reached the North Pole is still disputed. On 9 May 1926, Byrd, acting as navigator, and Floyd Bennett as pilot made what they declared to be the first airplane journey over the North Pole, flying from Norway, to the Pole and back (approximately 1,350 kilometres). When the pair returned after about 16 hours, they asserted they had accomplished the feat. Their plane was a Fokker tri-motor airplane, named Josephine Ford after the 3-year-old daughter of Ford Motor Company president Edsel Ford, who had helped finance the expedition.

In the years since this event, there has been speculation that the airplane may not have actually reached the North Pole. If so, the first flight over the Pole occurred three days later when Umberto Nobile (Italy), Roald Amundsen (Norway) and Lincoln Ellsworth (the United States), made a well-documented flight over the Pole in the dirigible Norge.

Some more quotes:

Give praise to others while they are here; they won’t need it in the hereafter.

Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need. I live more simply now, and with more peace.

Solitude is an excellent laboratory in which to observe the extent to which manners and habits are conditioned by others.

What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal.

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L’ uomo inizia a raggiungere la saggezza solo quando ammette di non essere più indispensabile.

Rendi lode agli altri mentre sono qui; non ne avranno bisogno nell’aldilà.

Metà della confusione nel mondo deriva dal non sapere di quanto poco abbiamo bisogno Vivo più semplicemente adesso e mi sento più in pace.

La solitudine è un ottimo laboratorio in cui osservare fino a che punto i modi e le abitudini sono condizionati dagli altri.

Ciò che la gente pensa di te non dovrebbe avere molta importanza, purché tu stesso sappia dove sta la verità; purtroppo ho scoperto, come altri che appaiono sui titoli dei giornali, che a volte può essere importante