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.

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.

Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most.

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

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.

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

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

Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.

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.

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

The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.

Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

College mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ‘em.

In Britain, it's good for me to be anonymous, because they just think it's a nobody. "Who is this guy?"

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage. It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

Our politics suffers from a shortage of people who put character and country before career and personal gain.

The hardest part of acting is not being guaranteed work. Every job could be your last.

I am not a neoconservative. I am pro-American.

Love had a thousand shapes.

When you're doing an out-and-out comedy, the notion of preparing for a character - I hope I don't reveal too much of myself here - but, uh, no, I'm not doing anything.