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The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

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
Excuse
Fact
Facts
Littles
Little
Nothing

More quotes by John le Carre

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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
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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
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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
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I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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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
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I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
John le Carre
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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
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Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.
John le Carre
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It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.
John le Carre
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Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.
John le Carre
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For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.
John le Carre
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
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In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.
John le Carre
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In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.
John le Carre
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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
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The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
John le Carre
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Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
John le Carre