Tom Clancy Quotations

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

The objective of a terrorist is to create political change in the society he targets.

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

What do I know about sex? I’m a married man.

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.

In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to put it on the line.

There are two kinds of people: the ones who need to be told, and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.

Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.

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

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.

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

Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, Oh, you can't do that.

I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.

Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.

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

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

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

I think about the characters I've created and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did. It's spooky.

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

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

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.

America is the most inventive country in the world because everybody has access to information.

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives.

Ebola is a nasty disease to get. It's scary. But as a weapon, it is probably not likely. Ebola is a difficult malady to weaponize and deliver efficiently.

Helicopters don't fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them.

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

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

Fundamentally, I think of myself as a storyteller, not a writer.

I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you're immortal.

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

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.

When I was doing 'Executive Orders,' I talked about Ebola to people who know about infectious diseases and their use as weapons of war, and guys told me that these weapons are more psychological than physical.

Before, it was always, 'Oh, no, here comes Clancy, that insurance agent.' Now it's, 'Oh, here comes Tom Clancy, bestselling author.' But I'm still the same basic middle-class slob.

My wife will tell you I'm practically addicted to the History Channel, ... And I read a lot of history.

My vision for this book and the others in the series is to let people know what kind of commanders we have, ... You don't pick generals off park benches. ... They are experts at what they do and lot of thinking goes into it. And I want to get across to people the intellectual dimension of command, to let people know that it's hard to be a general. And the people we have with general stars on their shoulders are pretty smart and pretty good guys.

The thing you have to understand about fighter pilots is they never quite grow past the stage of little boys buzzing past girls on their bicycles,

There's been historical conflict between China and Russia for well over 1,000 years,

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.

Along the way he also learned one or two things about leadership and national security and what our country is all about and what we're trying to do in the world.

Washington D.C. is about 300 square miles surrounded by realty.

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

There is a long and honorable tradition of citizens in service to their nation that goes back at least as far as Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen who, more than once answered his country's call, then returned to his farm and his family and his work.

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.

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

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.

The smaller the mind, the greater the ego.

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

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.

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

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

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

Success will ruin your life.

There are two kinds of people: the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.

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

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

I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.

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.

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

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.

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.

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

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.

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.

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.

Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.

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

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

Wars are begun by frightened men.

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

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.

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

An overnight success is ten years in the making.

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.

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

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

Most things in here don't react well to bullets.

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.

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.

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

The first rumors about Zenith came from the Czechoslovakians.

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.

All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York.

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

Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp,

Sunday was the normal day for the political awareness session at sea. Ordinarily Putin would have officiated, reading some Pravada editorials, followed by selected quotations from the works of Lenin and a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the readings. It is very much like a church service.

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

Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.

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

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

If a hero must have an unmarked grave, it should at least be close to where his comrades fell." "Comrades?" "One way or another we all fight for the things we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground?

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.

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

I don't discuss works in progress ...

I'm a spy... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.

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

I think it's going to be remembered as the last major war on planet Earth, if we're lucky, if we maintain our foreign policy properly. ... It will be remembered as the last time major countries had to put people in the field and put them in harm's way. It may be the last of all human nature wars, which is a nice way to remember any kind of a war, as the last one.