Truisms
 

I'll start.

Life:
You start life with a bag full of luck and an empty sack of experience. The trick in life is to fill the experience sack before you empty the luck bag.
Corollary 1: good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, experience usually comes from bad judgment.
Corollary 2: Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

Only two bad things can happen to you:
1. You wake up knowing this is your last day.
2. You wake up not knowing this is your last day.

Aviation:
Nothing is more useless than altitude above you, runway behind you, or a tenth of a second ago.
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.
In a two-seat aircraft, the other seat is always occupied by an idiot trying to kill you.
There are three simple rules for making a consistently smooth landing. Sadly, no one knows what they are.

If you can't hover you're _____________ (fill in the blank)

The classic for any pilot has to be.......Better to be on the ground wishing you were flying than the other way round!

...certainly not John Farley... :ok:

Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

In the event of an engine failure, we will look forward and crash visually...

"A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill."
Frank Frederick Borman - Commander Apollo 8

There old pilots and there are bold pilots; but there is no such thing as an old bold pilot.

From my QHI in 1985.

NEO

And Frank Spencer in 1978 at 6mins 10secs...:rolleyes:

Gravity sucks.

Thou shalt maintain thine airspeed least the Ground reach up and smite thee.

when I'm right no-one remembers, when I'm wrong no-one forgets.
Metmans epitaph.

If you have your back to the wind and low pressure is on your left ......... you are in the northern hemisphere. Aide to baby navigators.

Death and nurses

I'll take the nurses every time.

If during a night forced landing, the landing light shows a terrifying sight, switch it off.

The inexperienced press on, while the more experienced turn back to rejoin the most experienced who never set off in the first place!

Cyclic35,

A professional pilot is one who uses his skill and experience to get himself out of holes which they should have stopped him getting himself into in the first place....

If it flies, floats or :mad: , rent it.

...and your bum freezes

If your wife tells you she won't be a minute, she's probably right...