Chuck Yeager famous quotes

04-12-2025

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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Giving Up #Long
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#School #Years #Space
Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
-- Chuck Yeager

#People #Made #Willing
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

#Inspirational #Leadership #Jobs
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

#Want #Pilots #Grows
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Airplane #Use #Next
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Trying #Doe #Helping
There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Pilots #Natural #Born
The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Military #Saws #Firsts
Never wait for trouble.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Waiting #Trouble
The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Life #Success #Time
The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Pilots
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Differences #Chinese #Dimes
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 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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Military #Flying #Use
In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Space #Nasa #Mess
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Believe #Airplane #Wings
Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Sound #Break #Cockpit
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Space #People #Guy
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Airplane #Flying #Dying
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Real #Sky #Experience
At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Moments #Reason #Results
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Fun #People #Priorities
After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."
-- Chuck Yeager

#Mistake #Airplane #Men
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.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Hard Work #Flying #Luck
All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.
-- Chuck Yeager

#Air #Air Force #Force

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