We are strangely biased, as individuals and media institutions, to focus on big sudden changes, whether good or bad - amazing breakthroughs, such as a new gadget that gets released, or catastrophic failures, like a plane crash.

Steven Johnson

I grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Kenova. It's the city where the plane crashed from Marshall University. I watched the mountain burn, and my cousins were the volunteer firemen. I was 6 years old at the time.

Brad D. Smith

If the prospect of a bad result gets the heart racing - a plane crash, a terrible disease, a loss of 30 percent of your portfolio - most people will take strong steps to avoid it. They will pay too little attention to a comforting thought, which is that worst-case scenarios usually don't come to fruition.

Cass Sunstein

I lost my girl a couple years back, Aaliyah, in a plane crash. I wasn't expecting that, and also, my mother died, and at the time, my father wasn't in my life; the only person that took care of me was my mom.

Damon Dash

In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.

Dennis Quaid

If I don't die in a plane crash or something, this country has a rare opportunity to watch a great talent grow.

Eddie Murphy

The Howard Hughes I knew began to change after his plane crash in 1941.

Gene Tierney

The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College.

Godfried Danneels

I've done some luxury flying, which is brilliant. It has only happened once or twice, but it was nice because flying is the worst part of the holiday. But then again, if the plane crashes, you're still dead. For that much money I'd want a little capsule that whizzed me off to safety if it was going to crash.

Karl Pilkington

My mother was killed in a plane crash, so I hate travelling in planes. Death is so unexpected. I would actually rather stay at home and not go anywhere.

Linda McCartney

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Muhammad Ali

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.'

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn't mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn't know about why it happened.

Reba McEntire

Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.

Richard Leakey

Death by plane crash scares me. I travel a lot, and when you hit turbulence, and post 9/11, that's in the back of my mind a bit.

Robert Englund

I lost two brothers in an airplane crash, both of them leaving a wife and kids. When I get to Heaven, that's probably the first question I'd like to ask: 'Why was it necessary?'

S. Truett Cathy

It is extraordinary how safe flying has become. You are now statistically more likely to be elected president of the United States in your lifetime than you are to die in a plane crash. What an amazing achievement as a society! But what we end up focusing on are the catastrophic failures that are incredibly rare but happen every now and then.

Steven Johnson

We are strangely biased, as individuals and media institutions, to focus on big sudden changes, whether good or bad - amazing breakthroughs, such as a new gadget that gets released, or catastrophic failures, like a plane crash.

Steven Johnson

For me, people are like the black boxes found in the debris of airplane crashes.

Svetlana Alexievich

If the perpetrators of the World Trade Center plane crashes had a nuclear weapon, there's no doubt in my mind but that they would've detonated it in New York.

Ted Turner