Quotes from Stephen Coonts

All really great flying adventures begin at dawn.

Mistakes are inevitable in aviation, especially when one is still learning new things. The trick is to not make the mistake that will kill you.

Flight is romance - not in the sense of sexual attraction, but as an experience that enriches life.

With the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, and the rudder beneath my feet, I can savor that essence from which life is made.

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective Ã¢â'¬Â¦ the international system has been at the mercy of its most ruthless member. —Henry Kissinger

Experience, the wise man said, is a hard teacher. First comes the test, then the lesson.

Only in Nevada can you put up a billboard that says "Hot Slots" and attract thousands of women.

I sat there driving through America wondering about Barry Soetoro and his disciples. I have never trusted people who think they know how everyone else should live, and demand those other people obey. I am not a good follower. Aaugh!

Are warbirds the ultimate upscale status toy? Certainly. They're like beautiful women—if you have to ask what one costs, you can't afford it.

If they get ready and we aren't there, they'll fuss at us," Ray tells his son. Poor devil, I think. Women are the same everywhere.

What was it Pound had said in the Cantos? "I am not a demigod—I can't make it cohere.

This bureaucracy had been created after 9/11 because of political

As the governor scanned it, Swim explained. "Liberal progressive policies for the last fifty years or so have devastated the poor people of America. Welfare; aid to dependent families; food stamps; essentially free medical care; schools that try to prepare everyone for a four-year college degree, when only a fraction of the poor people will ever want or get one; lack of technical training; the breakdown of the black family—all those things have led us to where we are.

Blood is the fertilizer of freedom. Maybe yours and mine.

Abortions, gay marriage, legalized pot, all of that should be decided by the states. Whatever happened to the governmental powers reserved to the states? Let's declare ourselves independent, give the people of Oklahoma the right to decide which laws they want to live under, and tell Barry Soetoro where to go and what to do to himself when he gets there.

I am reminded of the words of that great American patriot Thomas Paine: 'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Flying is like sex—I've never had all I wanted but occasionally I've had all I could stand.

Grafton was silent, looking at nothing for a moment or two. Finally, he said, "Soetoro has been waiting for a terror strike so he could declare martial law, become a dictator, and fix all the things he doesn't like about America.

It's the ultimate theater. The stakes are money, the mother's milk of politics, great heaping mountains of it. And the actors are politicians, without a doubt the lowest form of animate life. Charlatans, mountebanks, liars, hypocrites—they'd cut off your nuts for another term in office, or even a favorable article in a hometown newspaper.

Martial law! Rule by decree from the White House! Barry Soetoro, emperor of the United States. People had been whispering for years about the possibility, but like most folks, I dismissed the whisperers as alarmist crackpots. Now, according to Sal Molina, the president's longtime guru, the crackpots were oracles.

Whoever rules the waves rules the world. —Alfred Thayer Mahan Six

The man was a case study for those fools who believed that a politician's character didn't matter as long as he was on their side. The truth was that Kalugin had no side but his own: he was as ready to devour his supporters as he was his enemies.

As for leaving earth, the answer was universally no. "This is our home," one woman explained to the starship commander with tears running down her face. "Certainly we faced all the problems of immigrants, learning the language, earning a living, getting an education here that would qualify us for professional positions, but somehow we all did it. We became Americans, citizens of this planet.

We are all tossed on the stormy seas of fate, at the mercy of men and forces beyond our power to comprehend, control or deflect. Sometimes we need an illusion.