A Quote by John le Carre

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

John le Carre

Quote Topics

About Back Believe Definitive Go Make Opposite Out Own Professional Public Puts Spies Started Statement Tends Trouble Us Way Which

Quote Author

John le Carre
English - Writer
Born: October 19, 1931

The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular.

Paul Strand

I think in terms of getting new artists who are not in that sort of stereotypical teenage boy demographic; there's been a lot of progress recently. And I shouldn't make a definitive statement about this, but my impression is that the main impediment to progress in that regard is the number of people who are choosing to make a go of it.

Adrian Tomine

Half of the modern world goes back as far as Pearl Jam. The real historians go back to U2. But they need to go back further. They have to go back to the '50s and '60s, where things started. That's how you get to be your own personality, by studying the masters. Rock and roll was white kids trying to make black music and failing, gloriously!

Steven Van Zandt

There is the Jewish Agency, which gets a lot of money from the United States, from American Jews, whose sole job it is to create settlements. It enlists people all over the world - especially in Russia, and in the United States, by the way - to come and settle in the Occupied Territories as a kind of religious statement, a kind of nationalist statement: "This is a country given to us by God." A lot of Israelis who do not believe in God believe that God has given us this country.

Uri Avnery

The second you become an actress, people take the licence to make many assumptions about you. You're in trouble if you interact with a director/actor. You're in even more trouble if you don't. When I started out, a single YouTube comment would make me sad for days, and I'd wonder how people could say such nasty things about me.

Nithya Menen

Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.

Robert Mankoff

Whether or not he came to believe it - so many people, when they have a mission, come to believe something in a way that may have started out as a slogan. You know, L. Ron Hubbard, not to make a random comparison, started Scientology as a scam.

Alex Gibney

Back in the day, when I started, you were still allowed to make mistakes. You got to make your mistakes in public, in a way. I think the world was a more forgiving place when I started my career, in the sense that we got time and space to develop as a writer.

Val McDermid

Let the Black man go - stop lying to us that you love us. And if you really love us, let us go and give us some of this territory that we can call our own; and give us the billions of dollars that we can get started with land and with tractors and the things that will make us an independent nation.

Louis Farrakhan

Malcolm X felt that if he could make a public - a prominent public statement to show his fidelity to the Honorable Elijah Mohammad that that might win him back in the good graces of the organization.

Manning Marable

And in my own life, in my own small way, I've tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities. Because I believe that each of us - no matter what our age or background or walk of life - each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation.

Michelle Obama

The excitement of theatre is palpable but the frustrations, and the complete absence of a definitive evening - the play as text means practically nothing in a way - , there's no particular performance that is definitive in the way a novel is a solid object you hold in your hands and here it is. You can't say that about a play. If the novel gives us a sense of throbbing consciousness, theater is pure soul, beautiful and elusive.

Don DeLillo

I have made a public statement about me and Ralph by being seen with him. I don't need to make any other. You can live the way you want.

Francesca Annis

How we dress is, as far as I can tell, the only inescapably public choice that we have. People don't need to know what you eat, people don't need to know who you have sex with. But there's no escaping what you wear and the fact that you've chosen it. Even if you insist that you don't care about fashion, that's your statement. It's really one realm of life where you are forced to make your own statement.