I don't watch the skies that much either. Thing is, if these things are generally silent, how many people would even be aware they were even there, if they don't happen to look up to the skies for some reason. I mean, unless the thing is large, and close by, you would never notice it, or easily pass it off as regular aircraft, if it is off in the distance.
I had never seen anything either until the night of January 23rd, 2008. I made my report to MUFON.com It can be found in their report archives. It was very bright, a large white glowing area on the front, a horizontal white glowing area in the middle, and a slightly smaller glowing white ball area on the back. When it came through the clouds, it lit up like crazy, very bright. It wasn't too high up from the ground, maybe 3 to 5 thousand feet, somewhere in there as a guess. I was probably within a mile, 2 at the most from the craft, and it made absolutely no sound whatsoever. That was the part that was so hard for your mind to fathom, how it was silent, when at that proximity, you would excpect aircraft to be so loud. I will never forget the experience.
A week or two later, we had an SR71 Blackbird fly over our house, it was seriously loud as it went by. This ufo that I saw, was many times faster than that Blackbird and completely silent. Being north of KC, we get jet flyovers coming into KCI all the time, over and over. This ufo was traveling many, many times faster than the jets, there is just no comparison. Even the comparison in speed to the Blackbird is comical. And the shape of the ufo, was nothing like anything I've ever seen or heard of. Some people in Washington state seemed to have seen the same object that I viewed that night.