Tom Clancy
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.Collection: Reality
It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.Collection: Thinking
Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Philosophy
About forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln - or against FDR. . . . That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another . . . the true independents. . . . That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country.Collection: Running
The tactics...no, amateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics.Collection: Soldier
Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp.Collection: Daughter
The Only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to readCollection: Reading
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Fire
You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired – it’s hard work.Collection: Hard Work
I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.Collection: Baby
Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it.Collection: Victory
I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Book
(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand.Collection: People
Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.Collection: Knowledge And Power
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.Collection: Believe
Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Memorable
Well, It's a Communist country, and the Communists do not reward personal initiative...except by execution.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Life
Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.Collection: Loneliness
Bill Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.Collection: Girl
Liberation and equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man's job to make a woman feel cherished and respected.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Ideas
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?Collection: Fleeting
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 successCollection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Art
Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.Collection: What If
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.Collection: Smart
She didn't strike me as a "crossword in ink" kind of girlCollection: Girl
The Only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Country
There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it’s not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.Collection: Country
I just finished reading the Koran, and there’s nothing in there I didn’t hear in Sunday school.Collection: Reading