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.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

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

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.

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.

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.

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.