#162 Chuck Yeager

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 not going home.”   [45:26] The Germans began to come up to challenge us and ran into a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw.  [50:30] If you love the hell out of what you’re doing, you’re usually pretty good at it, and you wind up making your own breaks. I wasn’t a deep, sophisticated person, but I lived by a basic principle: I did only what I enjoyed. I wouldn’t let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren’t interesting to me.  [55:38] Yeager would rely on himself. I couldn’t teach him enough.   [1:03:31]  My life was flying and pilots. I didn’t spend a whole helluva lot of time doing or thinking about anything else. We were an obsessed bunch, probably because we were so isolated.  [1:17:29] Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself; the trick is