110+ Tom Clancy Quotes On Writing, Military And Thriller

Tom Clancy was an American novelist best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. He wrote numerous bestselling novels, many of which were adapted into blockbuster films, such as The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. He was also the creator of the video game series, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Tom Clancy on writing, military, thriller.

Top 10 Tom Clancy Quotes

1. There are people in government who don't want other people to know what they know. It's just another example of elitism. And I spit on elitism. Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.
2. Helicopters don't fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them.
3. The good old days are now.
4. Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.
5. The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
6. The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.
7. The tactics...no, amateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics.
8. What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.
9. The smaller the mind, the greater the ego.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.
• What do I know about sex? I'm a married man.
• Most things in here don't react well to bullets.
• Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.
• Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can
• The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.
• Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.
• Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.
• Washington D.C. is about 300 square miles surrounded by realty.
• Remember, for every shot you fire, someone, somewhere, is making money.

Tom Clancy Quotes About Writing

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know. — Tom Clancy

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

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down. — Tom Clancy

If you don't write the book, the book ain't gonna get written. — Tom Clancy

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired – it’s hard work. — Tom Clancy

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. — Tom Clancy

Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story. — Tom Clancy

I write strictly for fun... as long as it stays fun I'll continue to do it. — Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy Quotes About People

There are two kinds of people: the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves. — Tom Clancy

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad? — Tom Clancy

Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people. — Tom Clancy

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

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

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us. — Tom Clancy

People, I am actually fairly smart. Why has this not occurred to anyone? The information is all out there, if you go looking for it, and the classified stuff just comes from analyzing the unclassified stuff and connecting the dots. — Tom Clancy

I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots. — Tom Clancy

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

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. — Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy Quotes About Technology

The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that. — Tom Clancy

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs. — Tom Clancy

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives. — Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy Quotes About Turned

I think it's an intellectual duty for a person who lives in a free society to read material not only with which you agree, but with which you disagree. Because every so often somebody you think is wrong will actually turn out to be right. — Tom Clancy

I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real, that's the spooky part. — Tom Clancy

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons. — Tom Clancy

Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp. — Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy Famous Quotes And Sayings

Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons. — Tom Clancy

America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. — Tom Clancy

Switzerland is a land where crime is virtually unknown, yet most Swiss males are required by law to keep in their homes what amounts to a portable, personal machine gun. — Tom Clancy

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops. — Tom Clancy

Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, Oh, you can't do that. — Tom Clancy

Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him? — Tom Clancy

No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there's something bad about it. — Tom Clancy

The Good of the People was a laudable enough goal, but in denying a man's soul, an enduring part of his being, Marxism stripped away the foundation of human dignity and individual value. It also cast aside the objective measure of justice and ethics which, he decided, was the principal legacy of religion to civilized life. — Tom Clancy

Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth. — Tom Clancy

Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy. — Tom Clancy

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. — Tom Clancy

If a hero must have an unmarked grave, it should at least be close to where his comrades fell." "Comrades?" "One way or another we all fight for the things we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground? — Tom Clancy

The most wounding insult to an educated Russian was to be called nekulturny-uncultured-yet the same men who sat in the gilt boxes at the Moscow State Opera weeping at the end of a performance of Boris Gudunov could immediately turn around and order the execution or imprisonment of a hundred men without blinking. A strange people, made more strange by their political philosophy. — Tom Clancy

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

She didn't strike me as a "crossword in ink" kind of girl — Tom Clancy

Morituri non cognant, perhaps. Those who are about to die — just don't know. — Tom Clancy

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

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place. — Tom Clancy

Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it. — Tom Clancy

That's the ultimate pornography. There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war. — Tom Clancy

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away. — Tom Clancy

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly. — Tom Clancy

I think about the characters I've created and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did. It's spooky. — Tom Clancy

Well, It's a Communist country, and the Communists do not reward personal initiative...except by execution. — Tom Clancy

A lawyer is just like an attack dog, only without a conscience. — Tom Clancy

Liberation and equal-rights issues notwithstanding, it was a man's job to make a woman feel cherished and respected. — Tom Clancy

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed. — Tom Clancy

Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they? — Tom Clancy

We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try. — Tom Clancy

An overnight success is ten years in the making. — Tom Clancy

Even true believers had consciences, Too bad. — Tom Clancy

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students. — Tom Clancy

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes—and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations. — Tom Clancy

Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are. — Tom Clancy

About forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln - or against FDR. . . . That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another . . . the true independents. . . . That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country. — Tom Clancy

I haven't got any fan mail from Osama bin Laden. I have no reason to believe he reads my stuff I'll never decide for commercial reasons to put something in that endangers our national security. You just can't do that. — Tom Clancy

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense. — Tom Clancy

There are only two ways we can be beaten: we die or we give up. And we're not giving up. — Tom Clancy

Surviving is much more painful than death. — Tom Clancy

Bill Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town. — Tom Clancy

And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen. — Tom Clancy

I think it's going to be remembered as the last major war on planet Earth, if we're lucky, if we maintain our foreign policy properly. It will be remembered as the last time major countries had to put people in the field and put them in harm's way. It may be the last of all human nature wars, which is a nice way to remember any kind of a war, as the last one. — Tom Clancy

Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. They realized they couldn't beat us. — Tom Clancy

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change about you, but your dream will not. It will always be your link with the person, young and full of hope. If you hold on to it you may grow old but you will never be old. And that is the ultimate success — Tom Clancy

America is the most inventive country in the world because everybody has access to information. — Tom Clancy

The Only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read — Tom Clancy

My life is a very simple life thank you — Tom Clancy

Every person you meet - and everything you do in life - is an opportunity to learn something. — Tom Clancy

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union. — Tom Clancy

(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand. — Tom Clancy

Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one or take equivalent action, I suppose. — Tom Clancy

Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians. — Tom Clancy

Sunday was the normal day for the political awareness session at sea. Ordinarily Putin would have officiated, reading some Pravada editorials, followed by selected quotations from the works of Lenin and a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the readings. It is very much like a church service. — Tom Clancy

There is a long and honorable tradition of citizens in service to their nation that goes back at least as far as Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen who, more than once answered his country's call, then returned to his farm and his family and his work. — Tom Clancy

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

I'm a spy. It's not really... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business. — Tom Clancy

The first rumors about Zenith came from the Czechoslovakians. — Tom Clancy

When you have stopped learning you have begun to die. — Tom Clancy

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start. — Tom Clancy

One thing about flying that he never got used to was that no matter how awful the weather was on the ground, if you flew high enough you could always find the sun. — Tom Clancy

When I go to peoples' houses I like to sneak into their bedrooms and try on their underwear. — Tom Clancy

There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit's personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps' secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos. — Tom Clancy

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story. — Tom Clancy

Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded of him. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knew different parts of the whole story, but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separate fragments of what had ...once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunder about in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought. — Tom Clancy

Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want. — Tom Clancy

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

All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York. — Tom Clancy

Life Lessons by Tom Clancy

1. Tom Clancy's works emphasize the importance of courage and perseverance in achieving success. He also highlights the need to take risks and to make difficult decisions in order to achieve one's goals.
2. He also teaches us the importance of being prepared and to always have a plan in place. He also encourages us to think strategically and to be aware of our surroundings.
3. Lastly, he encourages us to stay humble and to never forget our roots, no matter how successful we become. He also stresses the importance of loyalty and friendship in life.