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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.
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
Hands
Misuse
Truth
Skillful
Power
Terribly
Think
Single
Thinking
Information
People
Greatest
Enemy
History
Perversion
More quotes by John le Carre
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
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
Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
John le Carre
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
In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
John le Carre
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
History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.
John le Carre
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
All men are born free: just not for long.
John le Carre
Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
John le Carre
I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
John le Carre
On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.
John le Carre
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
John le Carre
He has the gift of quiet.
John le Carre
If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.
John le Carre
When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly it's just the beginning.
John le Carre
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John le Carre
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
The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.
John le Carre
I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.
John le Carre