30 Quotes by Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager was an American aviator and a true pioneer in the field of aviation and aerospace. Born in 1923, Yeager's most significant accomplishment came on October 14, 1947, when he became the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight. He accomplished this historic feat while piloting the Bell X-1 experimental aircraft, reaching a speed of Mach 1.06, equivalent to about 700 miles per hour at that altitude. This groundbreaking achievement opened the door to supersonic flight and paved the way for advancements in aviation technology.
Yeager's daring and skill as a test pilot contributed significantly to the development of high-speed aircraft and set the stage for subsequent breakthroughs in space exploration. Throughout his illustrious career, he continued to serve in various capacities, including as a combat pilot during World War II and the Vietnam War. Chuck Yeager's legacy extends beyond his feats as a pilot; he embodied the spirit of adventure, determination, and courage that continues to inspire generations of aviators and space explorers.
Chuck Yeager Quotes
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.
You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.
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.
Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most.
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.
Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.
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.
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.
The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.
The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.
If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.
At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.
Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.
There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the job as best you can. If it turns out good, fine. If it doesn't, that's the way it goes.
After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's your duty to fly the airplane. If you get killed in it, you don't know anything about it anyway. Duty is paramount. It's that simple if you're a military guy. You don't say 'I'm not going to do that - that's dangerous.' If it's your duty to do it, that's the way it is.
You concentrate on what you are doing, to do the best job you can, to stay out of a serious situation. That’s the way the X-1 was.
At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time.
Never wait for trouble.
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.
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 straight shooter.
In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.
There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.
It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.
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.
I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.
― Chuck Yeager Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
