Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Clancy - Page 2

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.

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

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

Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.

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

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes—and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.

The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.

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

The tactics...no, amateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics.

A lawyer is just like an attack dog, only without a conscience.

The most wounding insult to an educated Russian was to be called nekulturny-uncultured-yet the same men who sat in the gilt boxes at the Moscow State Opera weeping at the end of a performance of Boris Gudunov could immediately turn around and order the execution or imprisonment of a hundred men without blinking. A strange people, made more strange by their political philosophy.

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

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

Colleges typically did not tell you that ninety percent of your education came after you hung the parchment on the wall. People might ask for a rebate.

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

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

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

The Good of the People was a laudable enough goal, but in denying a man's soul, an enduring part of his being, Marxism stripped away the foundation of human dignity and individual value. It also cast aside the objective measure of justice and ethics which, he decided, was the principal legacy of religion to civilized life.

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

I've been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine.

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

Switzerland is a land where crime is virtually unknown, yet most Swiss males are required by law to keep in their homes what amounts to a portable, personal machine gun.

America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them.

I just finished reading the Koran, and there's nothing in there I didn't hear in Sunday school.

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

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.

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

That's the ultimate pornography. There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war.

I think it's an intellectual duty for a person who lives in a free society to read material not only with which you agree, but with which you disagree. Because every so often somebody you think is wrong will actually turn out to be right.

Morituri non cognant, perhaps. Those who are about to die — just don't know.

Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?

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.

Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it.

Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.

Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, the whole world just goes downhill.

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.

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

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.

Remember, for every shot you fire, someone, somewhere, is making money.

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

Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.

Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.

My life is a very simple life thank you

Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI... They realized they couldn't beat us...

I don't discuss works in progress.

To Ronald Wilson Regan, The Fortieth President of The United States: The Man Who Won The War.

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.

The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.

She didn't strike me as a "crossword in ink" kind of girl

Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded of him. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knew different parts of the whole story, but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separate fragments of what had ...once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunder about in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought.

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.

The general difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals like pretty pictures and conservatives like to build bridges that people can drive across.

Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want.

When I go to peoples' houses I like to sneak into their bedrooms and try on their underwear.

There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit's personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps' secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos.

There are people in government who don't want other people to know what they know. It's just another example of elitism. And I spit on elitism. Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.

They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard to capture the British frigate Serapis during their famous sea fight.

And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen.

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

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down.