Tom Clancy Quotes

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story...

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of go...

The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read

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

You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.

He had to grow his own NCOs.

The media "could not be policed from without and had to be policed from within.

In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to p...

Cheating was a concept both foreign and integral to the fighting of wars.

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, t...

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "Wha...

The extraneous duties, in a sense, were the job.

He had to do so many things and make each appear as though it were the only thing he had to do. He h...

Intelligence people are no different from anybody else. They have preconceptions, and when they see ...

A lively discussion is usually helpful, because the hottest fire makes the hardest steel.

I inherited curiosity from my Dad.

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to ...

There is no seamen in the world who prefers a slow ship to a fast one. The painters painted better, ...

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union it's not there anymore. Our technology was bet...

Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can―for a time. But not a very long time.

if you don't write it down, then it never happened

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing th...

The good old days are now.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life m...

The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for th...

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends...

Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could...

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connectic...

I understand why we do that now. It’s a help, not a threat. It’s something to remind you how importa...

Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true ope...

There are only two ways we can be beaten: we die or we give up. And we're not giving up.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never trans...

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.

The assistant commander at any post is supposed to be a ruthless son of a bitch.

One presidential advisor to another: "If the world made sense, we'd all have to find honest work.

Danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.

One thing about flying that he never got used to was that no matter how awful the weather was on the...

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

Sunday was the normal day for the political awareness session at sea. Ordinarily Putin would have of...

Panic is something that good operations officers plan for.

Clancy comments that the subtleties of national character can impact the world stage by making espio...

Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are.

To a man, professional soldiers despised terrorists, and each would dream about getting them in an e...

A rare academic (was) a man who knew what he didn't know.

He was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident genius.

Diplomacy "was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the card...

It wasn't an epidemic yet because no one knew about it.

Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper.

How strange that he should feel trapped by plans he himself had set in motion.

People in the intelligence community are not made to believe in coincidences.

A commander's pride got his soldiers dead.

Not every story started off big enough to notice.

If you don't write it down, it never happened.Cathy (& Jack) Ryan

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a...

They loved their country largely because they controlled it.