The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)

by Tom Clancy

Sasha taught the boy that preparation, knowledge, and discipline can deal with any form of danger; that danger confronted properly is not something a man must fear.

the First Rule of Security: The likelihood of a secret’s being blown is proportional to the square of the number of people who’re in on it.”

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

presidents have been known to spoil many carefully laid plans.

Samuel Johnson compared sailing in a ship to “being in jail, with the chance of being drowned,”

It is a principle of diplomacy,” Pelt observed, “that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.”

in allowing ourselves to be provoked by their aggressive actions, we fall into their trap.”

If they continue to provoke us, we shall watch to see what their tactics are, and give them nothing in return.

A man had to have something, he reasoned, to lose his mind in, at least once a day.

Rattling a saber makes noise, drawing it does not.

They know, well, they certainly suspect, that we have concealed something. This will mislead them about what it was we really concealed. The Russians have a saying for this. They call it wolf meat.

Well, at sea nothing was ever quite the same twice.

You’re an officer, he told himself, they pay you to think. First, what’s happening? Second, what do you do about it? Think it through, then act.