Tom Clancy Quotes - Page 3

Success will ruin your life.

Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand.

For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there's something bad about it.

Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy.

I haven't got any fan mail from Osama bin Laden. I have no reason to believe he reads my stuff I'll never decide for commercial reasons to put something in that endangers our national security. You just can't do that.

Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one or take equivalent action, I suppose.

Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.

Well, It's a Communist country, and the Communists do not reward personal initiative...except by execution.

One thing about flying that he never got used to was that no matter how awful the weather was on the ground, if you flew high enough you could always find the sun.

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

Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.

Bill Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.

Liberation and equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man's job to make a woman feel cherished and respected.

Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.

I understand why we do that now. It’s a help, not a threat. It’s something to remind you how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. Words are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change about you, but your dream will not. It will always be your link with the person, young and full of hope. If you hold on to it you may grow old but you will never be old. And that is the ultimate success

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict.

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us.

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

Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?

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.