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

The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.

Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach - then tipped right off the scale ... We were flying supersonic. And it was a smooth as a baby's bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.

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.

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.

At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.