84+ Ian Fleming Quotes (Spy, Adventure And Thriller)

Ian Fleming was a British author and journalist, best known for his James Bond series. He wrote twelve Bond novels and nine short stories. His works have been adapted into film and television, and have been the basis for many video games.

Top 10 Ian Fleming Quotes

1. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
2. You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.
3. Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.
4. Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.
5. You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
6. History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
7. Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.
8. Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.
9. A medium Vodka dry Martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred.
10. He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.

Ian Fleming Image Quotes

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it. — Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming Short Quotes

• The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.
• I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.
• It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.
• Diamonds are forever.
• At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.
• The World Is Not Enough
• They want us dead,' said Bond calmly. 'So we have to stay alive.
• I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
• Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.
• Our prisons are full of people who think they're Napoleon..or God.

Ian Fleming Famous Quotes And Sayings

As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. — Ian Fleming

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it. — Ian Fleming

People do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does, but I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetites. — Ian Fleming

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

I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good. -- from Quantum of Solace — Ian Fleming

Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts. — Ian Fleming

A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' ... Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it? — Ian Fleming

It's no good protecting people or even looking after them past a certain point. One can't grasp more than a piece of anyone. Most of the rest can only be protected by themselves and the remainder by hired specialists and doctors and dentists and professional protectors. — Ian Fleming

Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors. — Ian Fleming

Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils? — Ian Fleming

The conventional parabola--sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical. — Ian Fleming

My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43. — Ian Fleming

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

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

I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance...the Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. — Ian Fleming

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

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

I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book. — Ian Fleming

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful. — Ian Fleming

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

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. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. — Ian Fleming

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

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

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. — Ian Fleming

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition. — Ian Fleming

He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success. — Ian Fleming

He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex. — Ian Fleming

Shaken and not stirred. — Ian Fleming

If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks. — Ian Fleming

A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle. — Ian Fleming

A gentleman's choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit. — Ian Fleming

Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned. — Ian Fleming

People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years. — Ian Fleming

I'm looking for Commander James Bond, not an overgrown stunt man. [on meeting Sean Connery] — Ian Fleming

Everything I write has a precedent in truth. — Ian Fleming

He provides a vision. He often reminds countries of their responsibilities in a way that makes it seem not only like a legal obligation but a moral responsibility. — Ian Fleming

But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. 'This Man Died from Living Too Much'. — Ian Fleming

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

Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment. — Ian Fleming

...Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him. — Ian Fleming

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

A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference. — Ian Fleming

All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania... is as priceless as genius. — Ian Fleming

Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time. — Ian Fleming

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

Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles. — Ian Fleming

Never say 'no' to adventures. — Ian Fleming

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

I don't regard James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way. — Ian Fleming

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'. — Ian Fleming

I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did. — Ian Fleming

It reads better than it lives — Ian Fleming

And then one day when you're playing your little game you'll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly. — Ian Fleming

A woman should be an illusion. — Ian Fleming

You only live twice: Once when you're born And once when you look death in the face. — Ian Fleming

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

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due — Ian Fleming

And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger. — Ian Fleming

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin. — Ian Fleming

Mine’s Bond – James Bond. — Ian Fleming

She explained to me later that she must have been possessed by a subconscious desire to be raped. Well she found me in the mountains and she was raped - by me. — Ian Fleming

And don't get hurt,' [Dexter] added. 'There's no one to help you up there. And don't go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn't ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is 'live and let live'.' Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter In my job,' he said, 'when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It's 'live and let die'. — Ian Fleming

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive. — Ian Fleming

Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men. — Ian Fleming

I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very persnickety and old-maidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble. — Ian Fleming

Life Lessons by Ian Fleming

1. Ian Fleming's life lessons emphasize the importance of taking risks and never giving up on your dreams. He believed in the power of hard work and perseverance, and he was not afraid to take chances and make bold decisions.
2. Fleming also taught the importance of having a strong moral compass and staying true to your values. He believed in doing the right thing, even in the face of adversity, and he was not afraid to stand up for what he believed in.
3. Finally, Fleming's life lessons demonstrate the power of creativity and imagination. He was a master storyteller, and he used his creativity to craft some of the most iconic characters and stories in literature.