Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by Valerie Plame

I believe in much more diplomacy, not less.

When an issue is so fraught with partisanship, a special counsel provides some modicum of transparency and accountability rather the the veil of politics.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

We don't have to sit by while Trump uses his enormous global platform to undermine our national security. We would love to be able to actually force Twitter's hand to live up to its rules, explicitly forbidding hate speech and encouraging violence.

How lucky are we to have Naomi Watts and Sean Penn playing us? We've seen the final cut now a couple times, and the scenes with the marriage fraying at the edges are still very difficult to watch. However, our hope was that no matter your political persuasion, you're taken with the idea that it's important to hold power in check.

The intelligence community really is a vast bureaucratic entity, and it has been politicized in ways that are not effective for the gathering of intelligence and giving it to senior policymakers.

I don't care if you are for having Mexico pay for the border wall, or you want to repeal and replace Obamacare, or if you want women to have complete access to reproductive rights - I don't care. The fact is, if you don't get the nuclear issue right, none of the other ones matter.

I do not subscribe to the 'Trump is crazy like a fox' thing. I think that's being too generous.

Of course, when you're a parent, that's your paramount concern, for your children, and there were some very credible and frightening threats, and the agency declined to provide any security, and it felt like a betrayal all over again. It was really painful.

I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I'm the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.

I have always been appalled by the depiction of female CIA operatives.

There's a huge impact on national security and intelligence. The new normal is going to be more and more of these hacks, whether it's Target or Home Depot or the Office of Personnel Management or Jennifer Lawrence's nude photos.

From a counter-intelligence viewpoint, the OPM breach is really scary - but if we continue to see the erosion of purely commercial enterprises, where people lose confidence, the economy falters.

I think the Bush Administration was bound and determined on regime change, and we will be paying the price of that for some time to come.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask 'em how they're doing, although I would have liked to.

I've moved on to Plan B now, writing novels.

Joe was being called a liar and a traitor; I'm being accused of nepotism, of being a glorified secretary. The stresses that that places on an individual and, of course, a marriage were tremendous. It was - there were some dark days.

For me, I thought I had the best job in the world.

It's lonely. That's why, in many ways, the CIA is the world's biggest dating agency, I think. I imagine it's much like two actors that get married because they understand that universe. You know, I'm pretty sure the agency's divorce rate is rather high.

The fundamental problem is not that Trump has access to the nuclear launch codes, but that they exist at all.

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

I've been working with Global Zero. They are a great organization leading the resistance against nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons.

When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.

These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.

I think it's the height of patriotism to continue to exercise your right as a citizen and to hold your government to account. Isn't that what the very essence of democracy is about?

To my knowledge, no one has died from a cyberattack... but there is a gray area between peace and war.

Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.

When I was outed on July 14th, 2003, I was, until that moment, covert. That means no one outside of a very small circle knew where I really worked.

Any time you're a poster child for the CIA, there are a lot of people that are - either have ideological or they are mentally unbalanced - that are going to try to find you and perhaps cause you harm.

Our critics would love nothing more for us to go away and just be quiet. And we won't give them that satisfaction. We have young children that, one day, when they understand more of what's happened and what's transpired, we wanna be able to say to them, you know, we did our best. And we told the truth.

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.

Leaks are always bad news.

There is not adequate whistleblower protection.

Americans want to believe that we are a nation of laws, and no one is above them, including the president. Mr. Trump's and his associates' actions during his campaign and during his brief time in office are extremely troubling.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

I really believe the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons is the world's most ominous threat.

I find it really hard to relate to the Bond women or Angelina Jolie in 'Salt.' And of course it's informed by my experiences and the people I've met along the way and the places I've been.

We in no way are naive to think that just because Russia and the United States agree to reduce their arsenals, that everyone else will fall in line.

I think feeling bitter or angry is really useless.

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.

I come from a family in which public service was something to aspire to.

The entire intelligence community is so bloated and so reliant on contractors. There's no question there's many tasks that make sense to outsource, and yet, we have followed blindly this dogma that if it's private contracting, it must be better.

I would never jeopardize classified information. I served my country well and loyally, and I had to sue the C.I.A. on First Amendment grounds.

Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now... that gender bias is built into the system, and it's unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a 'good girl' and play by the rules.

The options are war versus peace, and I am delighted that, so far, it appears that peaceful negotiation has won the day.

When President Ronald Reagan negotiated some significant arms reduction deals with the then-Soviet Union, he was considered a real hero, someone who was advocating for peace.

I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases to see did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?

North Korea is the errant teenage child, aren't they? Or toddler - they're holding their breath until they get their way.

I love my career. I thought, if I was lucky, I would retire as a senior intelligence officer, still working on the issues of counterproliferation. But that didn't happen, so - new chapter.

There's no way you can possibly intellectually justify, 'Well, it's okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.' That logic goes nowhere fast.

Of course the job has a lot of glamour. But it really is about being smarter than your average bear. Your mind is your best weapon. It's great when you're a good shot with an AK-47, but it's about being clever.

Whatever you think of Trump, I think most people would agree he is impulsive, and we certainly have an impulsive leader in North Korea in Kim Jong-un. That's an unholy combination.

If Russia did interfere in our election - and, by most accounts, they did - then it is imperative for the health of our democracy to have a thorough and unbiased investigation into the matter.

Certainly, if we had not invaded Iraq on intelligence that was clearly manipulated and cherry picked, we would be in a different position today.

Privatization is more efficient and effective in some cases, but not in intelligence.

There is definitely a sense that when you, as a CIA ops officer... are handling assets, they are delivering to you their trust and their well-being. And you feel very protective of them, even if they're not very nice people.

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

When you work for the C.I.A. or as a diplomat, or serve in the military, you're not serving as a Democrat or a Republican; you serve as an American, whatever your personal moral compass or political views might be. So that would describe me.

We've made some good beginnings with the New START Treaty, but a lot more can be done.