Top 200 Tom Clancy Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.”

— Tom Clancy

102. “He was a person whose universe was very small indeed. It held only one person, himself, surrounded by things whose sole function was to be manipulated for his amusement or profit.”

— Tom Clancy

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

— Tom Clancy

104. “Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.”

— Tom Clancy

105. “Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.”

— Tom Clancy

106. “Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict.”

— Tom Clancy

107. “A trend was a trend only because people thought it so. And in thinking it so, they made it so.”

— Tom Clancy

108. “Liberation and equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man’s job to make a woman feel cherished and respected.”

— Tom Clancy

109. “Most things in here don’t react well to bullets.”

— Tom Clancy

110. “The Kealty administration had promised more “openness” and “transparency” in the clandestine CIA. Jack Junior’s father had written an op-ed in The Washington Post that suggested, in a manner that was still respectful to the office of the presidency, that Ed Kealty might want to look up the word clandestine in the dictionary.”

— Tom Clancy

111. “Yes,’ Smirnov answered, ’he was on a nuclear-powered submarine.”

— Tom Clancy

112. “Biryukov continued, “Roman Talanov, my counterpart in the FSB, is leading this charge. I suppose with complete control over Russian intelligence activity abroad, he can expand his influence and begin destabilizing nations beyond the near abroad. Russia will invade Ukraine, probably within the next few weeks. They will annex the Crimea. From there, if they meet no resistance from the West, they will take more of the country, all the way to the Dnieper River.”

— Tom Clancy

113. “It was the oddest of political prejudices that wealth didn’t come from work, but rather from something else, a something never really described, but always implied to be suspect.”

— Tom Clancy

114. “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.”

— Tom Clancy

115. “No complaints. The kid is back in the saddle,” Jackson said, sitting down. “You should have been up in the Tomcat with me last week. Oh, man, I’m finally back in the groove. I was hassling with a guy in an A-4 playing aggressor, and I ruined his day. It was so fine.” He grinned like a lion surveying a herd of crippled antelope. “I’m ready!” “When.”

— Tom Clancy

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

— Tom Clancy

117. “Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can – for a time. But not a very long time.”

— Tom Clancy

118. “History admires the wise, but it elevates the brave. – EDMUND MORRIS.”

— Tom Clancy

119. “The social contract in Russia is very simple. The population is willing to give up liberty and turn a blind eye to government corruption in exchange for security and prosperity. This worked as long as there was security and prosperity, but it is failing now.”

— Tom Clancy

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

— Tom Clancy

121. “A man had to have something, he reasoned, to lose his mind in, at least once a day.”

— Tom Clancy

122. “Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.”

— Tom Clancy

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

— Tom Clancy

124. “Jack, the world is full of people who can only feel big by making other people look small, and the bigger the target, the better they feel about it.”

— Tom Clancy

125. “Remember, for every shot you fire, someone, somewhere, is making money.”

— Tom Clancy

126. “A commander’s pride got his soldiers dead.”

— Tom Clancy

127. “Burgess said, “If you are asking about them using strategic nukes against us, I will be very clear. Admiral Jorgensen and I have been to several meetings about this recently at the Pentagon. Russia no longer has any ability whatsoever to execute a successful debilitating first strike on the United States. Two-thirds of their nuclear weapons are obsolete.”

— Tom Clancy

128. “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

129. “Shortly before seven, he made Katie her sourdough toast and coffee, and woke her up with breakfast in bed. The tire shop he managed was closed on Sunday, so this was the only day he could relieve his wife of what would otherwise be a seven-day-a-week job. Taking care of the kids so she could sleep in an hour was, she frequently assured him, so romantic, and so sexy – and on most Sunday nights after the kids went to bed, she showed him exactly how much she appreciated the gesture. But.”

— Tom Clancy

130. “I just finished reading the Koran, and there’s nothing in there I didn’t hear in Sunday school.”

— Tom Clancy

131. “To Ronald Wilson Regan, The Fortieth President of The United States: The Man Who Won The War.”

— Tom Clancy

132. “Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.”

— Tom Clancy

133. “Diplomatic exchange combined the worst aspects of explaining things to a toddler and talking with a mother-in-law. It was dull, it was tedious, it was exasperating, and it was necessary.”

— Tom Clancy

134. “Jack ordered a bottle of pinot noir, and they perused the menu while they chatted. “So you were at Georgetown.” Melanie said it as a statement.”

— Tom Clancy

135. “Wars are begun by frightened men.”

— Tom Clancy

136. “The first rumors about Zenith came from the Czechoslovakians.”

— Tom Clancy

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

— Tom Clancy

138. “The Americans are always investigating one another, it was their national sport.”

— Tom Clancy

139. “Yeah, have a couple cases of beer sent out,” Commander Wood replied. It was the current joke between P-3C and submarine crews. “Thanks for the data. We’ll take it from here. Out.” Overhead, the Lockheed Orion increased power and turned southwest. The crewmen aboard would each hoist an extra beer or two at dinner, saying it was for their friends on the submarine.”

— Tom Clancy

140. “If the First Toddler wears it, it has to be fashionable.”

— Tom Clancy

141. “Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.”

— Tom Clancy

142. “It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.”

— Tom Clancy

143. “The three wolves didn’t know that the sheep herd had three dogs in it. Big ones.”

— Tom Clancy

144. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is not the job of government to be the national nanny. The average citizen can look after his or her own needs without assistance from somebody who works here in Washington.”

— Tom Clancy

145. “It wasn’t an epidemic yet because no one knew about it.”

— Tom Clancy

146. “The only person who has artistic control is the director, and ‘director’ is how you spell God in Hollywood.”

— Tom Clancy

147. “Discord, in large part fueled by Moscow, was the order of the day in several other bordering nations; the invasion of Estonia was unsuccessful, but there remained the threat of invasion in Ukraine. In addition to this, a near–civil war in Georgia, bitterly disputed presidential campaigns in Latvia and Lithuania, riots and protests in other nearby countries.”

— Tom Clancy

148. “They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard to capture the British frigate Serapis during their famous sea fight.”

— Tom Clancy

149. “If you’re really good, they’d taught him at Quantico, you don’t have to be arrogant.”

— Tom Clancy

150. “He was carrying nothing illegal, except for that which was in his head.”

— Tom Clancy