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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
History
Perversion
Hands
Misuse
Truth
Skillful
Power
Terribly
Think
Single
Thinking
Information
People
Greatest
Enemy
More quotes by John le Carre
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
John le Carre
The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.
John le Carre
In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.
John le Carre
Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time.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.
John le Carre
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
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
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
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
Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
John le Carre
...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
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.
John le Carre
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
I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
John le Carre
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
John le Carre
Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
John le Carre
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
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
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
And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
John le Carre