Top 180 Ian Fleming Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

— Ian Fleming

2. “The World Is Not Enough.”

— Ian Fleming

Featured in: Famous Movie Quotes

3. “Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

— Ian Fleming

4. “Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.”

— Ian Fleming

Featured in: Loneliness Quotes

5. “You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.”

— Ian Fleming

6. “Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.”

— Ian Fleming

7. “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.”

— Ian Fleming

8. “He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex.”

— Ian Fleming

9. “Everything I write has a precedent in truth.”

— Ian Fleming

10. “A gentleman’s choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit.”

— Ian Fleming

11. “Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.”

— Ian Fleming

12. “The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.”

— Ian Fleming

13. “I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much.”

— Ian Fleming

14. “History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

— Ian Fleming

15. “Never say ‘no’ to adventures.”

— Ian Fleming

16. “Never send a man where you can send a bullet.”

— Ian Fleming

17. “Older women are best because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.”

— Ian Fleming

18. “I am a poet in deeds – not often in words.”

— Ian Fleming

19. “It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

— Ian Fleming

20. “Before a man’s forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two, it’s the story that hurts most. Anyway I’m not forty yet.”

— Ian Fleming

21. “It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.”

— Ian Fleming

22. “There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.”

— Ian Fleming

23. “At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.”

— Ian Fleming

24. “Some love is fire, some love is rust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust.”

— Ian Fleming

25. “It reads better than it lives.”

— Ian Fleming

26. “It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”

— Ian Fleming

27. “Diamonds are forever.”

— Ian Fleming

28. “Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

— Ian Fleming

29. “A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.”

— Ian Fleming

30. “Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.”

— Ian Fleming

31. “Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, ‘Casino Royale’ dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.”

— Ian Fleming

32. “Luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued.”

— Ian Fleming

33. “I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I’d ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day.”

— Ian Fleming

34. “Mister. Nothing is forever. Only death is permanent. Nothing is forever except what you did to me.”

— Ian Fleming

35. “Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

— Ian Fleming

36. “Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.”

— Ian Fleming

37. “A woman should be an illusion.”

— Ian Fleming

38. “Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.”

— Ian Fleming

39. “Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.”

— Ian Fleming

40. “As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.”

— Ian Fleming

41. “He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure – the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success.”

— Ian Fleming

42. “And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger.”

— Ian Fleming

43. “Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.”

— Ian Fleming

44. “And then one day when you’re playing your little game you’ll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly.”

— Ian Fleming

45. “Bond didn’t defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.”

— Ian Fleming

46. “If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive.”

— Ian Fleming

47. “These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men.”

— Ian Fleming

48. “I’m not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.”

— Ian Fleming

49. “Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.”

— Ian Fleming

50. “Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.”

— Ian Fleming