Quote

...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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Expression
Health
Secret
Nations
Subconscious
Political
Services
Also
Granted
Real
Measure
Took

More quotes by John le Carre

Image
It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.
John le Carre
Image
It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.
John le Carre
Image
Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
John le Carre
Image
I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.
John le Carre
Image
But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.
John le Carre
Image
Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
John le Carre
Image
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
John le Carre
Image
I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.
John le Carre
Image
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
John le Carre
Image
When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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.
John le Carre
Image
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
John le Carre
Image
Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
John le Carre
Image
I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
John le Carre
Image
It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
Image
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John le Carre
Image
The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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