Quotes from Eddie Rickenbacker

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.

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.

I believe that if you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

Flying saucers are real. Too many good men have seen them, that don't have hallucinations.

Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder.

Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.

I am not such an egotist as to believe that God has spared me because I am I. I believe there is work for me to do and that I am spared to do it, just as you are.

The experienced fighting pilot does not take unnecessary risks. His business is to shoot down enemy planes, not to get shot down.

In this business, you find the enemy, then go after and destroy him. Everything else is rubbish!

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.

Courage is about doing what you're afraid to do.

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.

Courage is about doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.