That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.
— Johnny Cash
Irresistibly Air Force quotations
Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?
War is not only a matter of equipment, artillery, group troops or air force;
it is largely a matter of spirit, or morale.
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
The most important thing in fighting was shooting, next the various tactics in coming into a fight and last of all flying ability itself.
My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power - not with ground forces.
So the reason that the Bay of Pigs failed was that the original promise made by Eisenhower was not kept by the subsequent Administration. It allowed hostile air to wipe out the approaching invasion force.
If you're from New York and you're Catholic, you're still Jewish.
If you're from Butte Montana and you're Jewish, you're still goyisch. The Air Force is Jewish, the Marine Corps dangerous goyisch. Rye Bread is Jewish, instant potatoes, scary goyisch. Eddie Cantor is goyisch, George Jessel is goyisch-Coleman Hawkins is Jewish.
And where is the Prince who can afford to so cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them?
The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.
I didn't get to meet Hank Williams. I was in the Air Force on Okinawa when he passed away.
In order to assure an adequate national defense, it is necessary - and sufficient - to be in a position in case of war to conquer the command of the air.
As an active member of the Air Force, Army and Mine Warfare Caucuses, I meet with enlisted personnel and officers on a regular basis to learn more about their needs, both on the job and with their families.
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.
I recently learned something quite interesting about video games.
Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.
How sweet the morning air is! ...How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
The future battle on the ground will be preceded by battle in the air.
This will determine which of the contestants has to suffer operational and tactical disadvantages and be forced throughout the battle into adoption compromise solutions.
Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army and calls it a war.
During a trip to Iraq last fall, I visited our theater hospital at Balad Air Force Base and witnessed these skilled medical professionals in action and met the brave soldiers whose lives they saved.
A modern, autonomous, and thoroughly trained Air Force in being at all times will not alone be sufficient, but without it there can be no national security.
Our warriors are no longer limited to the people who fly the airplanes.
..Our entire force is a warrior force. Being a warrior is not an AFSC, ...it's a condition of the heart.
I have a mathematical certainty that the future will confirm my assertion that aerial warfare will be the most important element in future wars, and that in consequence not only will the importance of the Independent Air Force rapidly increase, but the importance of the army and navy will decrease in proportion.
The Marine Corps is proud of the fact that it is a force of combined arms, and it jealously guards the integrity of its air-ground team.
Offense is the essence of air power.
There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.
Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.
The mail service has been excellent out here, and in my opinion this is all that the Air Force has accomplished during the war.
I grew up in a time when people believed in duty, honor and country.
My grandfathers were both officers. My father was a General in the Air Force. My brother and I were both in the Army. I've always felt a kinship with soldiers; I think it's possible to support the warrior and be against the war.
I'm an Air force Brat and I've lived all over the world and this country and there were people in my community who were gay - nurses, hairdressers, designers - people who just had a different way about themselves.
This car is more fun than the entire French air force crashing into a firework factory.
All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.
My mom and dad met at UCLA when he as a captain in the Air Force and she was in her junior year.
Airpower has become predominant, both as a deterrent to war, and-in the eventuality of war-as the devastating force to destroy an enemy's potential and fatally undermine his will to wage war.
The Admiralty said it was a plane and not a boat, the Royal Air Force said it was a boat and not a plane, the Army were plain not interested.
Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.