Chuck Yeager

“You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.”

“Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.”

“If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.”

“The secret to my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.”

“Later on, 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.”

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

“There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.”

“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.”

“Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.”

“It's your duty to fly the airplane. If you get killed in it, you don't know anything about it anyway.”

“The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.”

“At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.”

“What I am, I am. I don't apologize for it.”

“All I know is I've done my best.”