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But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
John le Carre
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John le Carre
Age: 89 †
Born: 1931
Born: October 19
Died: 2020
Died: December 12
Actor
Film Producer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Spy
Writer
Sweetwater
Texas
David John Moore Cornwell
David Cornwell
John le Carre
Difference
Differences
Working
State
Bigs
States
Totalitarian
West
More quotes by John le Carre
For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.
John le Carre
The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior
John le Carre
A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
John le Carre
I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
John le Carre
Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
John le Carre
Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
John le Carre
Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
John le Carre
If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
John le Carre
People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.
John le Carre
There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.
John le Carre
Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.
John le Carre
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishounorable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
John le Carre
We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.
John le Carre
Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.
John le Carre
Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre
The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.
John le Carre
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
John le Carre
People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.
John le Carre
...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.
John le Carre
