Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?
— Joseph LeConte, November 1888
It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.
— Thomas Edison, November 1895
I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
— Lord Kelvin, 1895
I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.
— Lord Kelvin, 1896
The present generation will not [fly in the next century], and no practical engineer would devote himself to the problem now.
— Worby Beaumont, January 1900
There is no basis for the ardent hopes and positive statements made as to the safe and successful use of the dirigible balloon or flying machine, or both, for commercial transportation or as weapons of war.
— George Melville, December 1901
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.
— Simon Newcomb, 1900
Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
— Simon Newcomb, 1902
— Stanley Mosley, 1905
The aeroplane will never fly.
— Lord Haldane, 1907
1920
“No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.” — Orville Wright, inventor of the airplane.