Since Benjamin Franklin’s eloquent bad-mouthing of the bird when the time came to select a national emblem, the Bald Eagle has been an unjust target for abuse. Its taste for winter-killed fish has made it a “carrion eater.” Its talent for close-range aerial pursuit has made it a “thief.” Its penchant for sitting for long periods and not expending energy without need has made it “lazy,” and this is not fair. Only humans seem to equate frenetic activity with success. Eagles can and do sit for extended periods precisely because they are successful predators who can find food at need. Energy wasted is just that. A waste.

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked. "That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth — we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.

A dialogue occurred, I happen to know,
Betwixt the white eagle and the crow.
Birds we are, said the crow, in the main,
Friends we are, and thus we shall remain.
Birds we are, agreed the eagle, only in name,
Our temperaments, alas, are not the same.
My leftovers are a king's feast,
Carrion you devour, to say the least.
My perch's the king's arm, his palace my bed,
You haunt the ruins, mingle with the dead.
My color is heavenly, as everyone can tell,
Your color inflicts pain, like news from hell.
Kings tend to choose me rather than you,
Good attracts good, that goes for evil too

Eagle of the land, extensive thy glance. I would have requested an active courser Of vigorous trot, the price of the spoil of Taliesin. One is the violent course on the bottom and the summit, One is the gift of a baron to a lord. One is the herd of stags in their fight. One is the wolf not covetous of broom, One is the country where a son is born, And of one form and one sound is the battle-place of warriors.

The eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.

There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even something of it in the fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the bird that bore the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where they will in darkness, and for them as for the sceptics the universe may have no centre; kites and vultures may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as for the plutocrats existence may have no origin and no end; but it was far back in the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun.

Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!

The very eagle, destined to soar so high and to see so far, begins his life in the fissures of the rocks, and in his early days only sees the arid and sometimes fetid borders of his eyry.

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl?

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!

The eagle must age, renew itself, change its beak and remove its flying feathers. This is a natural process for humans.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

There's a time to soar like an eagle and a time to burrow like a worm. It takes a pretty sharp cookie to know when to shed the feathers and (long pause) to begin munching the humus! (characteristic Onsager giggle).