There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

Welles’s line is a wry, compressed observation about the emotional rhythm of air travel: long stretches of enforced inactivity punctuated by the possibility—however rare—of sudden catastrophe. The joke depends on stark contrast and exaggeration, turning a modern convenience into a miniature existential drama. It also reflects a broader Wellesian sensibility: skepticism toward technological “progress” as a source of comfort, and a taste for aphorisms that expose how quickly human feeling swings between tedium and fear when control is surrendered to machines and systems.