“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.”

What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

I’m learning kite surfing. It’s a little surfboard you have on your feet with straps, and you have a big kite like a power glider in the air that pulls you. You don’t need waves to move, and it makes a big spray of water as you go.

Pioneering spirit should continue, not to conquer the planet or space … but rather to improve the quality of life.

Welcome to those who believe in the power of dreams and who would like to join me in my exploration of life.

Adventure is something out of the usual pattern, a point at which you cannot avoid confronting the unknown, so that you have to dig inside yourself to find the courage and resources to deal with what may lie ahead, and to succeed.

My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean… For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.

Nothing can prevent us from another day and night, and the myth of perpetual flight.

A movie I must have seen 10 times is ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’ It’s an old movie, but still such a beautiful message. If I had only one film I could take on my computer on a desert island, I would take ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’

The pioneering spirit is less about thinking up new ideas, as ridding ourselves of dogmas and habits that hold us captive in thinking.

We know that dreams fuel innovation.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

The triad is our ability of the United States to conduct nuclear attacks using airplanes, using missiles launched from silos or from the ground, and also from our nuclear subs’ ability to attack. And it’s important – all three of them are critical. It gives us the ability at deterrence.

Airplanes may kill you, but they ain’t likely to hurt you.

Oldtimers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they’re successful.

I’ve owned 41 airplanes. A few of them would talk with me. This little seaplane, though, we’ve had long conversations in flight.

An airplane has two million, and it has to stay up in the air.

Nine g’s is good, if the pilot can stand it.

We couldn’t stand it. Not in the airplanes of World War II.