I've cheated the Grim Reaper more times than anyone I know.
— Eddie Rickenbacker
The excitement of automobile racing did not compare with what I knew must come with aeroplane fighting in France.
Some friends are better shots than are casual enemies.
Never count on the crowd to take care of you.
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 thought the clear air, watching the earth below, and the men on it, no bigger than ants.
Long practise in driving a racing car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed and helps tremendously in getting motor sense, which is rather the feel of your engine than the sound of it, a thing you get through your bones and nerves rather than simply your ears.
The experienced fighting pilot does not take unnecessary risks. His business is to shoot down enemy planes, not to get shot down.
I would rather have a million friends than a million dollars.
It is the easiest thing in the world to die. The hardest is to live.
Sports of every sort had always appealed to me.
I am not a labor hater.
When I was racing, I had learned that you can't set stock in public adoration or your press clippings. By the time I was 26, I'd heard crowds of 100,000 scream my name, but a week later they couldn't remember who I was. You're a hero today and a bum tomorrow - hero to zero, I sometimes say.
The obviously inexperienced pilot is the game the scientific air-fighter goes after, and the majority of victories are won that way. But, on the other hand, it is the novice usually who gets the famous ace by doing at some moment the unexpected thing.
I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through - then follow through.
Aviation is proof that given, the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.
Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
The sensation of dying is sweet, sensuous, placid.
There is a peculiar gratification in receiving congratulations from one's squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world.
I'll fight like a wildcat until they nail the lid of my pine box down on me.
I shall never ask any pilot to go on a mission that I won't go on.
Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder.
Flying is one of the safest jobs in the Army as long as you don't drop out. If you do drop out, you are a dead man, and dropping out means, usually, that you have made a mistake or let go of your grip.
The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence.
