Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.

Flying saucers are real. Too many good men have seen them, that don't have hallucinations.

The sensation of dying is sweet, sensuous, placid. It is the easiest thing in the world to die. The hardest is to live.

The experienced fighting pilot does not take unnecessary risks. His business in to shoot down enemy planes, not to get shot down. His trained hand and eye and judgment are as much a part of his armament as his machinegun, and a fiftyfifty chance is the worst he will take or should take except where the show is of the kind that . . . justifies the sacrifice of plane or pilot.

I would rather have a million friends than a million dollars.

When I look up and see the sun shining on the patch of white clouds up in the blue, I begin to think how it would feel to be up somewhere above it winging swiftly through the clean air, watching the earth below.

I've cheated the Grim Reaper more times than anyone I know, and I'll fight like a wildcat until they nail the lid of my pine box down on me.