Chuck Yeager
Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn't in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.Collection: Knowledge
You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.Collection: Best
If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an outstanding landing.Collection: Good
In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.Collection: Space
You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.Collection: Chance
I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.Collection: Fear
There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.
Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
What good does it do to be afraid? It doesn't help anything. You better try and figure out what's happening and correct it.
It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.
Never wait for trouble.
If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.
Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don't do, you don't believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane.
The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.
It's really difficult for fanatic churchgoers to understand God can't help me. I'm the only one who can help me.
When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.
Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.Collection: Fun
There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime's learning experience. For the best pilots, flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best. Experience is everything. The eagerness to learn how and why every piece of equipment works is everything. And luck is everything, too.Collection: Hard Work
The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.Collection: Military
At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.Collection: Moments
Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most.Collection: Break Through
Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.Collection: Jobs
Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach - then tipped right off the scale ... We were flying supersonic. And it was a smooth as a baby's bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.Collection: Baby
The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.Collection: Life
The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.Collection: Pilots
There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the job as best you can. If it turns out good, fine. If it doesn't, that's the way it goes.Collection: Jobs
It's your duty to fly the airplane. If you get killed in it, you don't know anything about it anyway. Duty is paramount. It's that simple if you're a military guy. You don't say 'I'm not going to do that - that's dangerous.' If it's your duty to do it, that's the way it is.Collection: Military
All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.Collection: Air
I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.Collection: Differences
After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."Collection: Mistake
Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.Collection: Acting
That to me is a bunch of crap trying to shoot guys up into damned space. What they're going to do is they're going to wipe out half a dozen people one of these days, and that will be the end of it.Collection: Space
I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.Collection: Regret
You concentrate on what you are doing, to do the best job you can, to stay out of a serious situation. That’s the way the X-1 was.Collection: Jobs
At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time.Collection: Reading
I don't think about life everlasting. If something doesn't have scientific evidence to back it up, I don't believe it. I'm a straight shooter.Collection: Believe
I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained.Collection: School
As we went through mach one, the nose started dropping, so we just cranked that horizontal stabilizer down to keep the nose up. We got it above mach one, and once we got it above the speed of sound, then you have supersonic flow over the whole airplane, so you have no more shock waves on it that are causing buffeting...You really don't think about the outcome of any kind of a flight, whether it's combat, or any other kinds of flights, because you really have no control over it.Collection: Airplane