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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.