Clancy..............................

Tom Clancy (1947-2013) was a prolific writer, mostly on military topics.  Read more about him here and here. He was fairly quotable too:

"I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part."

"Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die."

"Look, this is simple. The good old days are now. OK? The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that."

"Look, technology is another word for tool. There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. We got past that. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives."

"The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense."

'The average guy is fairly smart, if you give him the ability to make decisions for himself. That's the whole premise of America, and that's why America has prospered, and it prospers because if the average guy can get information, he can make his own decisions."

"Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser."

'People, I am actually fairly smart. Why has this not occurred to anyone? The information is all out there, if you go looking for it, and the classified stuff just comes from analyzing the unclassified stuff and connecting the dots..."

"Historically, anything that gets information to people is good for the world. The most important human being who ever lived, if you want to leave out religious figures, would be Johannes Gutenberg... that's when the liberation of human thought happened, because people could read the thoughts of people across the world, and have thoughts of their own, and publish them and spread information around."