Founders: #162 Chuck Yeager

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What I learned from reading Yeager: An Autobiography by General Chuck Yeager. ---- [10:14] I was a competitive kid. I always tried to do my best. I never thought of myself as being poor or deprived in any way. We managed to scrape by. Kids learned self-sufficiency. Mom and Dad taught us by example. They never complained. I had certain standards that I lived by. Whatever I did, I determined to do the best I could at it. [13:22] The sense of speed and exhilaration makes you so damned happy that you want to shout for joy. [17:15] In nearly every case the worst pilots die by their own stupidity. [26:04] I sensed that he was a very strong and determined person, a poor boy who had started with nothing and would show the world what he was really made of. [38:48] Every muscle in my body is hammering at me. I just want to let go of his guy and drop in my tracks—either to sleep or to die. I don’t know why I keep hold of him and struggle to climb. It’s the challenge, I guess, and a stubborn pride knowing that most guys would’ve let go of Pat before now. [40:57] Chuck is the most stubborn bastard in the world, who doesn’t dabble in gray areas. He sees in black and white. He simply said, “I’m n

[00:00:00] I reached the top of the arc and began to level off. I could have shaken hands with Lord Jesus. 80,000 feet. A nighttime sky with flickering stars at 10 in the morning. Up there, with only a wisp of an atmosphere, steering an airplane was like driving on slick ice. I dropped my nose slightly to pick up more speed and watched the meter register Mach 2.2, then Mach 2.3. [00:00:26] I was accelerating at 31 miles per hour per second, approaching 1,650 miles per hour, the fastest any pilot had yet flown and the fastest that any straight-winged airplane would ever fly. My outside wing…

Founders: #162 Chuck Yeager

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