Quotes from Tom Clancy

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

My life is a very simple life thank you

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?

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.

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

Success will ruin your life.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life may change, but your dream doesn't have to. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it.

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

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.

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.

In the Soviet Union every worker is a government worker, and they have a saying: As long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work.

A conscience is the price of morality, and morality is the price of civilization.