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The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.Tom Clancy
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I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.Tom Clancy
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If you don't write it down, then it never happenedTom Clancy
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Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are.Tom Clancy
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Danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.Tom Clancy
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If you don't write it down, it never happened. Cathy (& Jack) RyanTom Clancy
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The extraneous duties, in a sense, were the job.Tom Clancy
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You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.Tom Clancy
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Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true open of security and opportunity and fellowship and respect.Tom Clancy
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I inherited curiosity from my Dad.Tom Clancy
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He had to grow his own NCOs.Tom Clancy
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Clancy comments that the subtleties of national character can impact the world stage by making espionage more difficult. Americans were quirky by nature, making the sorts of eccentric moves that had to be followed up on as potential espionage cues. Russians, on the other hand, were too orderly by nature to make such distractions appear natural.Tom Clancy
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Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make new deposits.Tom Clancy
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It wasn't an epidemic yet because no one knew about it.Tom Clancy
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A rare academic (was) a man who knew what he didn't know.Tom Clancy
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A commander's pride got his soldiers dead.Tom Clancy
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Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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A lively discussion is usually helpful, because the hottest fire makes the hardest steel.Tom Clancy
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How strange that he should feel trapped by plans he himself had set in motion.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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There are only two ways we can be beaten: we die or we give up. And we're not giving up.Tom Clancy
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To a man, professional soldiers despised terrorists, and each would dream about getting them in an even-up-battle; the idea of the Field of Honor had never died for the real professionals. It was the place where the ultimate decision was made on the basis of courage and skill, on the basis of manhood itself, and it was this concept that marked the professional soldier as a romantic, a person who truly believed in the rules.Tom Clancy
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Panic is something that good operations officers plan for.Tom Clancy
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It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.Tom Clancy
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People in the intelligence community are not made to believe in coincidences.Tom Clancy
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Diplomacy "was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand.Tom Clancy
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There is no seamen in the world who prefers a slow ship to a fast one. The painters painted better, the cooks took a little more time with the meals, and the technicians tightened the bolts just a little more. Their ship was no longer a cripple, and pride broke out in the crew like a rainbow after a summer shower.Tom Clancy
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The media "could not be policed from without and had to be policed from within.Tom Clancy
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Not every story started off big enough to notice.Tom Clancy
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One presidential advisor to another: "If the world made sense, we'd all have to find honest work.Tom Clancy
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The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.Tom Clancy
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Cheating was a concept both foreign and integral to the fighting of wars.Tom Clancy
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He was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident genius.Tom Clancy
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The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to readTom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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They loved their country largely because they controlled it.Tom Clancy
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Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.Tom Clancy
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Intelligence people are no different from anybody else. They have preconceptions, and when they see them in real life, it reinforces how brilliant they think they are.Tom Clancy
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The assistant commander at any post is supposed to be a ruthless son of a bitch.Tom Clancy
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Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can―for a time. But not a very long time.Tom Clancy
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He had to do so many things and make each appear as though it were the only thing he had to do. He had to compartmentalize everything, when on one task to pretend that the others didn't exist.Tom Clancy
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Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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The good old days are now.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to put it on the line.Tom Clancy
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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?Tom Clancy
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Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.Tom Clancy
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The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.Tom Clancy
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There used to be this country called the Soviet Union it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy
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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.Tom Clancy