chuck yeager

“ If you can walk away from a landing, its a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, its an outstanding landing. ”

“ All that I am I owe to the Air Force. ”

“ As we went through mach one, the nose started dropping, so we just cranked that horizontal stabilizer down to keep the nose up. ”

“ The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down. ”

“ 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.' ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Maybe that helped me in war. I'm a fatalist, if that's what you call it. The phrase that I use is 'If you can't do anything about it, forget it.' ”