The pilots were not much to brag about as single combat warriors, but as members of a squadron, their souls disappeared into the squadron's soul, just as their individual airplanes became the pure vectors of the squadron's direction, vector, and will.Tom Wolfe
The difference between fear and panic is knowing what to do next.Tom Wolfe
The Mercury Seven were not extraordinary men. They were extraordinary pilots, pugnacious bastards who referred to passenger jets as 'spam cans' and who worshipped at the Church of the Righteous Prophylactic - and ordinary humans when the chutes had collapsed and the helicopters had hauled them out of the drink.Tom Wolfe
If a man volunteered for martyrdom, like the monkey, he had probably already proved that he wasn't smart enough to be worth a damn.Tom Wolfe
But to be in the game! To live To see! To be conscious of getting one's just deserts! Such is the hidden and buoyant purpose for living.Tom Wolfe
Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.Tom Wolfe
A young man might go into military pilot training believing in the dignity of man - and come out believing so much more strongly in the dignity of men with the right stuff.Tom Wolfe
It was the same virus that had once animated the stick-and-wire biplanes, the rotting team of the early barnstorming days… The right stuff… The virus of the truly righteous single-combat warrior.Tom Wolfe
For the seven pilots selected for the Mercury program in military terms they had just won the hottest competition of their lives, but in a way they had just lost it, because they knew, each one of them, that with his every step from this moment on, he would be he, his naked self, out there, in full view.Tom Wolfe
A man either had it or he didn't! There was no such thing as having most of it.Tom Wolfe