Tom Clancy Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The good old days are now.

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

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.

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

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

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 your dream away.

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..."

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

The smaller the mind, the greater the ego.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit's personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps' secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos.

The Only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read

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

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.

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

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?

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 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.

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.

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

Wars are begun by frightened men.

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

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

We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it.

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.

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

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

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.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.

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.