My favorite quotes

 Quotes are like beacons in the night. They guide you safely through the deepest valleys, and once on the hilltop, give you guidance on the direction of your next move. Here’s a few of mine:

“One day at a time.” - Me, at USAFA, 1978 - 1982

“You’re always one decision away from a totally different life.”
— Unknown

“…Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.
     Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your service must be … Duty, Honor, Country.”
— Douglas MacArthur

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” — Leonardo da Vinci

“Skill’d in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands, And, with his compass, measures seas and lands” — John Dryden

“You don’t have to ‘Click-click-click.’”  - Laura Griest

“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things …” — Antoine de St-Exupery

“Second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning”  
— Admiral James T. Kirk

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
— Herm Albright

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” — Thomas Paine

“If I do my full duty, the rest will take care of itself
— General George S. Patton, USA

“Never give in… never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force… never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”  
— Winston Churchill

“Didn’t I tell you?” - Laura Griest

“Real men fly air to mud because they understand the fundamental law of wartime negotiations. You negotiate with the enemy with your knee in his chest and your knife at his throat!” — Unknown

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
— John Stuart Mill

“You had me at ‘Hello.’” - Dorthy Boyd, ‘Jerry McGuire’

“I never trust a fighting man who doesn’t smoke or drink.”  
—  William “Bull” Halsey

“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”  — John Paul Jones

“I love the smell of sweat, piss, and JP-8 in the evening… It smells like VICTORY!”  

— Me (One warm summer evening just before I retired)

“Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!”
— Maj. T.J. ‘King’ Kong, ‘Dr. Strangelove’

“Life loves on.” - Robert G. McIlvaine (look him up - 9/11)

“What’s next?” - President Jed Bartlett, ‘West Wing’

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This would look great on a tombstone

COSMOS MARINER
DESTINATION UNKNOWN
— Conrad Aiken