Best 151 quotes of Tom Clancy on MyQuotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

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.

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

Every person you meet - and everything you do in life - is an opportunity to learn something.

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.

Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't discuss works in progress.

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

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?

If you don't write the book, the book ain't gonna get written.

If you want to kick the tiger in his ass you'd better have a plan for dealing with his teeth

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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?