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.

As we went through mach one, the nose started dropping, so we just cranked that horizontal stabilizer down to keep the nose up. We got it above mach one, and once we got it above the speed of sound, then you have supersonic flow over the whole airplane, so you have no more shock waves on it that are causing buffeting...You really don't think about the outcome of any kind of a flight, whether it's combat, or any other kinds of flights, because you really have no control over it.

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

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.

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.

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