Stephen Coonts > Quotes

“All really great flying adventures begin at dawn.”
― Stephen Coonts

“Don't let the assholes grind you down.”
― Stephen Coonts

“I didn't join the army to shoot Americans. If I wanted to shoot Americans I'd have joined the police.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Back when I was a callow youth, if I had known how miserable the hours would be working for the CIA, I would have just told that recruiter to send me in prison instead.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Assassin

“God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Doing nothing guarantees failure -Rubens”
― Stephen Coonts and William H. Keith, Sea of Terror

“Medicine often tastes bad, but until we fix the government policies that breed poverty, we have condemned the poor, black, white, and brown to a life of economic slavery.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“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.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Long ago, when I was very young, I learned that all political points of view were valid for the people who held them, except for the fanatics on the fringes who are usually incapable of rational thought. Think about the blind men and the elephant. Honorable people can hold very different opinions because they have very different life experiences. Liberals, conservatives, middle-of-the-roaders, big-government types, libertarians, old, young, middle-aged, highly educated or average or uneducated, skilled or unskilled, stupid, average smarts, or genius, they all see a little bit of how the world works and process it into a worldview, and they are all correct. The genius of representative democracy is that it takes all these viewpoints and grinds them up and arrives at some kind of resolution, most of the time. Look at the federal tax code: government policy has tried to accommodate all major and many minor concerns and still raise revenue. Any dictator with half a brain could put a tax code together that is simpler and more efficient and raises more revenue. But the United States still has one of the highest, if not the highest, rate of voluntary tax compliance of any country in the world. So something must be working right.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“I’ve talked to Molina three times today, and he wants me to pull the rabbit out of the hat now”.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Assassin

“An American’s enthusiasm for law and order is directly proportional to the degree to which he believes his personal safety or his livelihood is threatened. When the perceived threat recedes, so does his willingness to be policed.”
― Stephen Coonts, Under Siege

“Hey, mate. How about a beer?” The Australian who asked held out a couple of cold bottles of Fosters.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Intruders

“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.”
― Stephen Coonts, Fortunes of War

“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.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Can you believe that? Americans spitting on the men who have sworn to defend them, on the men who’ve sworn to obey the orders of the elected, civilian government.”
― Stephen Coonts, Flight of the Intruder

“with the Communists in power, nothing in China is worth real money. That’s the lesson the Americans and British and Japanese are going to learn the hard way.”
― Stephen Coonts, Hong Kong

“The sun coming through the gaps in the drifting clouds gives the land the look of pastels. No wonder several generations of artists have been enchanted by New Mexico. This place is enough to make Monet’s knees quiver.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Cannibal Queen: A Flight Into The Heart Of America

“And a whole lot of people who go flying with him and his pilots get a taste of real flying, not the airline passenger stuff, which is to flying what masturbation is to sex, merely a pale imitation of the real thing.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Cannibal Queen: A Flight Into the Heart of America

“The president is declaring martial law tomorrow. He wants you standing behind him tomorrow at ten o’clock in the press room when he announces it.” Jake Grafton didn’t look surprised. I was flabbergasted, but since I was sitting on the couch against the wall Sal Molina couldn’t see the stunned look on my face unless he turned his head, and he didn’t. “Why?” said Grafton. “These terrorist conspiracies need to be rooted out. We must make sure the American people are safe, and feel safe.” “Horseshit,” Grafton roared, and smacked the desk with both fists. “Pure fucking horseshit! Oh, a million or two jihadists would love to murder Americans, including Soetoro, if they could get here, but if they were a credible threat we’d have heard about it. This is just an excuse for Soetoro to suspend the Constitution and declare himself dictator.” “The American people must be protected, Admiral. The president is taking no chances. No one wants to be the next victim of Islamic terrorists.” “So he is going to rule by decree.” “We face a national emergency.” “And he is going to postpone or cancel the election in November. Isn’t that the real reason for martial law?”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“In America a man’s right to hate his neighbor is protected as it is nowhere else on earth.”
― Stephen Coonts, Under Siege

“When we perish from human memories we are no more. We are well and truly gone, as if we had never been.”
― Stephen Coonts, Cuba

“His ranch adjoined the Rio Grande, the river that formed the boundary between the United States and Mexico, with its poverty, caste system, and systemic corruption. So the poor Mexicans migrated. Over thirteen million of them, over a fifth of the Mexican population, had crossed that border illegally in the last fifty years and were grubbing for work in the United States, usually for minimum wage, or living on welfare and food stamps. Illiterate, unskilled, and usually unable to speak English, they flooded the schools with their children, kept blue-collar wages low, and formed an underclass that resisted assimilation and required huge amounts of public assistance dollars.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Everyone has to die sooner or later and he wasn’t afraid of it. Dying is the easy part, like going to sleep. Getting to that moment can be a real bitch, though.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Red Horseman

“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.”
― Stephen Coonts, The Art of War

“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.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The desire of Barry Soetoro to drastically increase the number of non-white voters in America as quickly as possible to enhance the political power of blacks and Hispanics and Muslims and dilute the power of the whites is another.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“You can function just as long as your superiors have faith and confidence in you. When they lose it—your fault, other people’s fault, whatever—then you have to leave and make room for the next guy. Your time at the plate is over.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty

“When the rain comes, it does not matter whether you welcome it or hate it—the rain falls upon your head regardless.”
― Stephen Coonts, Hong Kong

“If it floats, flies or fucks, rent—don’t buy!”
― Stephen Coonts, The Red Horseman

“Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason—the need to protect the nation from terrorism—met with widespread skepticism. After all, at least three of the Saturday jihadists had entered with Soetoro’s blessing, over the objections of many politicians and the outraged cries of all those little people out there in the heartland, all those potential victims no one really gave a damn about. His suspension of the writ of habeas corpus went over the heads of most of the millions of people in his audience, since they didn’t know what the writ was or signified. He didn’t stop there. He adjourned Congress until he called it back into session, and announced an indefinite stay on all cases before the courts in which the government was a defendant. His announcement of press and media censorship “until the crisis is past” met with outrage, especially among the talking heads on television, who went ballistic. Within thirty minutes, the listening audience found out what the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant: FBI agents arrested select television personalities, including some who were literally on camera, and took them away. Fox News went off the air. Most of the other networks contented themselves with running the tape of Soetoro behind the podium making his announcement, over and over, without comment. During the day FBI agents arrested dozens of prominent conservative commentators and administration critics across the nation, including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ralph Peters, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Howard Stern, and Charles Krauthammer, among others. They weren’t given a chance to remain silent in the future, but were arrested and taken away to be held in an unknown location until Soetoro decided to release them.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand