Tom Clancy Quotes

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

Surviving is much more painful than death.

You can act like a policeman or a soldier, but not both.

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. Take the AEGIS system in the navy. It's a radar computer system for air-battle management. What it does is give the commander an extra 15 minutes to decide what he's going to do to fight a battle, and those 15 minutes are decisively important.

It’s a leadership function. They taught me that at Quantico. The troops have to see you doing the job. They have to know you’re there for them.” And I have to be sure that it’s all real, that I actually am the President.

The assistant commander at any post is supposed to be a ruthless son of a bitch.

Every country in the world had a bureaucracy, whose entire purpose was to delay important things from happening.

I’ll indulge you and look at the pictures.

The hard part is discriminating between factual reporting and journalistic fiction. Last year at the National Press Club I said out loud and in public [C-SPAN was there] that the difference between me and a lot of reporters is that I do good fiction. Some were polite enough to chuckle.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud,

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

At this table, a loud voice was just a man venting his stress. A quiet one was far more dangerous.

You have to know the things you don’t know. You have to figure out what the questions are before you can start looking for answers.

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.

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.