Top 200 Tom Clancy Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “Ryan asked, “Is there any economist in the world who correlates Russia’s increased authoritarianism with their increased economic growth?” Helen Glass thought for a moment. “Sure, you can find some who will say just that, but remember, there were economists predicting the fall of capitalism and the rise of world communism, even in the eighties.” Jack laughed. “Good point. You can always find an expert to confirm your belief, no matter how ridiculous.”

— Tom Clancy

152. “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

153. “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

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

— Tom Clancy

155. “Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.”

— Tom Clancy

156. “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.”

— Tom Clancy

157. “Colleges typically did not tell you that ninety percent of your education came after you hung the parchment on the wall. People might ask for a rebate.”

— Tom Clancy

158. “The extraneous duties, in a sense, were the job.”

— Tom Clancy

159. “The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.”

— Tom Clancy

160. “Specifically, they’d used genetic material from colon cancer, one of the more robust strains, and the results had been striking. The.”

— Tom Clancy

161. “What backed the money was not gold or something of intrinsic value, but rather the collective belief that money had value because it had to have such value.”

— Tom Clancy

162. “Your Highness, what do you call it when a high-ranking person lies right in your face?” the President asked with a wry smile. “Diplomacy.”

— Tom Clancy

163. “The mark of a good officer, Wegener repeatedly told his youngsters, was willingness to admit he had something yet to learn.”

— Tom Clancy

164. “Way to go, Dallas!”

— Tom Clancy

165. “Tradition is important,” Evans said. “For a soldier, tradition is often the reason one carries on when there are so many reasons not to. It’s more than just yourself, more than just your mates – but it’s not just something for soldiers, is it? It is true – or should be true – of any professional community.”

— Tom Clancy

166. “The allocation of research money was a political act.”

— Tom Clancy

167. “All history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the past.”

— Tom Clancy

168. “After three weeks in this environment, Sally was probably doing the cutest curtsies in the history of Western Civilization. By this time the Palace staff was probably fighting for the right to look after her. Sally was a true daddy’s girl. The ability to manipulate the people around her came easily. She’d practiced on her father for years.”

— Tom Clancy

169. “Reporters called down every other profession – medicine, law, politics – for failing to meet a level of professional responsibility which they would allow no one to enforce on themselves, and which they themselves would too rarely enforce on their own. Do as I say, not as I do was something you couldn’t say to a six-year-old, but it had become a ready cant for grown-ups. And if it got any worse, then what?”

— Tom Clancy

170. “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.”

— Tom Clancy

171. “Robert, that’s a little too far off the wall, I think,” Greer analyzed.”

— Tom Clancy

172. “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

173. “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

174. “The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.”

— Tom Clancy

175. “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

176. “That’s up to you, Jack, but part of doing this kind of work is the willingness to put on blinders. Deal with what’s in front of you. Every terrorist has a mother and father. Maybe kids, maybe people that love him. Hell, six days out of seven he might be a decent citizen, but on that one day he decides to pick up a gun or plant a bomb, he’s a threat. And if you’re the guy standing between him and innocent lives, the threat is all you can afford to worry about. You get what I’m saying?”

— Tom Clancy

177. “The first step in accomplishing any goal was deciding that it was possible.”

— Tom Clancy

178. “The pinnacle of power in China is the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the tiny body that sets policy for the nation’s 1.4 billion citizens.”

— Tom Clancy

179. “I don’t discuss works in progress...”

— Tom Clancy

180. “Not every story started off big enough to notice.”

— Tom Clancy

181. “All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York.”

— Tom Clancy

182. “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.”

— Tom Clancy

183. “Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics – most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect.”

— Tom Clancy

184. “The most important lesson that came out of Vietnam for me was that Marines take care of Marines.”

— Tom Clancy

185. “There was nothing like an appeal to honor. It was a virtue that all craved, even those who lacked it. Fundamentally, honor was itself a debt, a code of behavior, a promise, something inside yourself that you owed to the others who saw it in you. Everyone in this room wanted all the others to look and see a person worthy of respect and trust, and honor.”

— Tom Clancy

186. “Mr. Ambassador, any person in the United States, regardless of his nationality or the manner of his arrival, is entitled to the full protection of our law. Our courts have ruled on this many times, and under our law no man or woman may be compelled to do something against his will without due process.”

— Tom Clancy

187. “Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper.”

— Tom Clancy

188. “He picked the milk off the porch, and then searched for a moment before finding the newspaper in the bushes near the door. The copy of the International Herald Tribune was wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the weather, indicating the paperboy had better sense than he had aim.”

— Tom Clancy

189. “Throughout history, people have risked their lives for love, for patriotism, for principle, and for God far more often than fear has made them run away. Upon that fact depends progress. The.”

— Tom Clancy

190. “Either people were trustworthy or they were not.”

— Tom Clancy

191. “Like many weak men, he made a great ceremony of personal strength and power.”

— Tom Clancy

192. “Confusion is the ally of the prepared.”

— Tom Clancy

193. “You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together – what do you get? The sum of their fears.” – Winston Churchill.”

— Tom Clancy

194. “What am I supposed to do about you?”

— Tom Clancy

195. “Yet another proof that the drafters of the Constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They’d assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they’d been. One could almost hear the “Oops!” emanating from all those old graves.”

— Tom Clancy

196. “Tears released poisons from inside, poisons which if not released could be as deadly as the real kind. The.”

— Tom Clancy

197. “It was scary, and it was lonely, but it was home for Sergeant Chavez.”

— Tom Clancy

198. “When you dealt with explosives, you didn’t rush and you didn’t take chances.”

— Tom Clancy

199. “They loved their country largely because they controlled it.”

— Tom Clancy

200. “Irishmen with guns were like squirrels with nuts, always stashing them, and sometimes forgetting where the hell they’d been stashed.”

— Tom Clancy