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

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

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

Never wait for trouble.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

You do what you can for as long as you can and when you finally cant you do the next best thing. You back up but you dont give up.

I like performers who I know are for real. You can tell, man, there's an intensity about their stuff. You can tell right away they're real people, ya know?

If anything's progressive, then we make progress.

I did find some time to go to a record store and check out 'Headstrong' actually in the racks. It was pretty cool; I never thought I'd see my own CD sitting there with everyone else's. I made my Mom take lots of pics!

As governor, I'm spending my time focused in three areas: creating jobs, reducing the expense of government and schools.

We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It's much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren't present here and now.

There can be theory but, you know, the problem is you've got to be able to test it. So theories are one thing, testing is another.

I've always been a person that's totally comfortable with my sexuality and showing my affections with my guy friends. At the end of the day, your guy friends are very important; they're the guys that are always going to be there. It's just you being a friend to me and I'm being a friend to you.

Some stories are true that never happened.

I don't spend much time looking back at what happened. I do remember it, but I don't see any purpose of wanting to look back.

Don't cast your pearls before swine

For centuries, the arts and philanthropists have worked well together: look at the Tate family and the Courtaulds. If you've been fortunate enough to have some success in business, I think it's important to put something back.

Illness transforms the things you most fear into the things you crave and would hold onto if you could.

A mans friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

The resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. This new group will be defined soon by me.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

Suffering doesn't improve human beings, does it?

I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that.

Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement, but also contains areas of controversy. That's inescapable.

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.

Display advertising and the movies, though they may dull the wits, certainly stimulate the eyes.

With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.

I'm not perfect, but what's wonderful about eating a plant-based diet is, I don't have to be.

It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.