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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.

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
Play
Rotten
Martyrs
Sadists
Think
Saints
Drunkards
Squalid
Thinking
Fools
Procession
Pansies
People
Priests
Spy
Brighten
Vain
Traitor
Traitors
Saint
Martyr
Spies
Fool
Indians
Cowboys
Lives
Cowboy
Espionage

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
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Love means having something to betray.
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More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
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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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I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
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The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.
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There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
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I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.
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But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
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Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
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The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
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Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
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I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?
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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.
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Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
John le Carre
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I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
John le Carre