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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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