It is a dream of mankind to fly like a bird.

The sentence frames human flight as a long-standing, collective aspiration—something imagined well before it became technologically feasible. By invoking “mankind” and the archetypal image of a bird, it links aviation to a deeper symbolic desire for freedom, transcendence, and mastery of nature’s limits. The simplicity of the phrasing suggests a universal, almost mythic impulse: people look to animals that embody capabilities we lack and turn that envy into invention. Read this way, the quote is less about literal flying than about how dreams motivate progress—how an ancient fantasy can become a practical project once imagination, curiosity, and engineering converge.