Since we took to the sky, we have wanted to fly faster and farther. And to do so, we've had to believe in impossible things and we've had to refuse to fear failure.

Dugan frames aviation as a metaphor for technological progress more broadly: once humans achieved flight, ambition immediately shifted from the mere possibility to pushing limits of speed, range, and capability. The quote argues that breakthroughs require a deliberate stance toward uncertainty—treating “impossible things” as provisional challenges rather than fixed constraints—and a cultural refusal to be paralyzed by the prospect of failure. Implicitly, it endorses high-risk, high-reward experimentation (common in frontier R&D) where setbacks are expected and informative. The emphasis is less on individual heroism than on a mindset: sustained innovation depends on imagination plus resilience, and on institutions that tolerate failure in pursuit of transformative gains.