Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

Never wait for trouble.

— Chuck Yeager

“You get in, You shoot, You get out!”

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

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

— 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.

— Chuck Yeager

You concentrate on what you are doing, to do the best job you can, to stay out of a serious situation. That’s…

— Chuck Yeager

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing.…

— Chuck Yeager

The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over…

— Chuck Yeager

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…

— Chuck Yeager

I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it…

— Chuck Yeager

It's really difficult for fanatic churchgoers to understand God can't help me. I'm the only one who can help me.

— Chuck Yeager

What good does it do to be afraid? It doesn't help anything. You better try and figure out what's happening and correct…

— Chuck Yeager

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani,…

— Chuck Yeager

Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you…

— Chuck Yeager

At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The…

— Chuck Yeager

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and…

— Chuck Yeager

There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the…

— Chuck Yeager

That to me is a bunch of crap trying to shoot guys up into damned space. What they're going to do is…

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work,…

— Chuck Yeager

Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached…

— Chuck Yeager

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager

When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.

— Chuck Yeager

After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."

— 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…

— Chuck Yeager

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my…

— Chuck Yeager

Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority…

— Chuck Yeager

If you can walk away from a landing, it's a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it's an…

— Chuck Yeager

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

— Chuck Yeager