Chuck Yeager Quotes
18 quotes from Chuck Yeager — Test pilot who became the first person to break the sound barrier in 1947..
“You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.”
“I was so excited, I could have flown it all day. It was as smooth as a baby's bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.”
“The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.”
“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.”
“Flying is much more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime.”
“The secret to my success was that somehow I always managed to live to fly another day.”
“At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.”
“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.”
“Later, I realized that the mission of the test pilot is to expose himself to the unknown and push the envelope. If you don't do that, you're not doing your job.”
“After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a let-down. There should've been a bump in the road, something to let you know that you had just punched a nice, clean hole through the sonic barrier.”
“The Bell X-1 looks like a bullet with wings on it, and basically, that's what it was.”
“If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.”
“There's 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.”
“You concentrate on what you are doing, flying the airplane. You don't worry about what you can't control.”
“I don't think about time. You subconsciously work toward improving constantly. That's how I approach it, but you also have to be able to release it and let it go and not worry about it.”
