Quotes by Chuck Yeager

About Chuck Yeager:

Charles Elwood is a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force and record-setting test pilot. He briefly served in the French Resistance during World War II and in 1947, he became the first pilot confirmed to have traveled faster than sound.
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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chuck Yeager

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

Chuck Yeager

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Bio

  • NameChuck Yeager
  • DescriptionUS World War II flying ace and test pilot; first pilot to fly faster than sound
  • BornFebruary 13, 1923
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionOfficer; Aviator; Test Pilot
  • AwardsDistinguished Flying Cross; Bronze Star Medal; Legionnaire Of Legion Of Merit; Purple Heart; Presidential Medal Of Freedom; Air Medal; Silver Star; Air Force Distinguished Service Medal; Harmon Trophy