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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
State
Bigs
States
Totalitarian
West
Difference
Differences
Working

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I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
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I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
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It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.
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What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.
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Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
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Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time.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.
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The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
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I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.
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The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
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The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
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There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.
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Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
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Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.
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I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.
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You should have died when I killed you.
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Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.
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I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
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If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
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Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
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