“Remember, you fly an airplane with you head, not your hands and feet.”

Always keep an ‘out’ in your hip pocket.

It’s not how close can you get to the ground, but how precise can you fly the airplane.

In 1903 the Wright brothers invented airplanes, because in 1902 they took a road trip across the country with their family.

When an airplane’s engines fail, it is not the end of the flight.

No one is ever better off with dictators but there comes a time you know, when you’re on an airplane, they always say, “in case of an emergency oxygen masks will drop down. Put yours on first and then administer help to your neighbor.” We need oxygen right now.

The way the public sees it is this. If we don’t leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don’t succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it’s because it was easy and anyone could have done it.

The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization. . . . A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.

My ‘thing’ is that I just lie in my immense bed and look out the window at the skyline over Virginia and the sky and the airplanes coming into Reagan. I really love doing that.

Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.