Pilot Life Quotes

I grew up and I kind of took the road of becoming a pilot, which was another dream I had of flying, and once I did attend the air force academy, that dream of flying became more like a project, and I wanted to be a fighter pilot, which I did. I became a fighter pilot.

Being a display pilot is probably the thing I've been most proud of in my life. Don't really fly anymore now though. I have three small children and as most of my friends were killed in different accidents, I realised that it was probably just a matter of time before I went that way.

Now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things.

The life of an aviator seemed to me ideal. It involved skill. It brought adventure. It made use of the latest developments of science. Mechanical engineers were fettered to factories and drafting boards while pilots have the freedom of wind with the expanse of sky. There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God.

Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.

My first inclination was toward flying and being a pilot.

I live in the sky as a pilot, so it has great meaning to me.

After the war, in which I served as a pilot in the Air Force, I took up films.