Khalid > Khalid's Quotes

“Always craft a story from real life encounters. It is more believable and you are able to tell it with some emotion.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“There are many ways to turn someone to betray their country - money, ideology, compromise and ego work best. If they don't respond to those, a bullet will help seal the deal.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“We are equal partners. You don't get to stand around and mean well. Get off your butt and do exactly what we tell you.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“Spy' is such a short ugly word. I prefer 'espionage.' Those extra three syllables really say something.”
― Howard Tayler, Emperor Pius Dei

“I'm the thing that the ISI fears the most. The spy who becomes a traitor willingly and embraces everything he's been trained to destroy.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“We are the silent, the misunderstood and the maligned. We are Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“Espionage is not supposed to be sporting, otherwise it would not be clandestine.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“A legend is who we become for a specific point in time.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“Intelligence is a game of imperfect information. We can guess our opponent's moves, but we can't be sure until the game is over.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“God says when. I execute.”
― Khalid Muhammad, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

“War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“In their minds it is the mark of an ill-prepared and amateur army to rely in the moments before battle on what they call pseudoandreia, false courage, meaning the artificially inflated martial frenzy produced by a general's eleventh-hour harangue or some peak of bronze-banging bravado built to by shouting, shield-pounding and the like[...] It made no difference. None was a match for the warriors of Lakedaemon, and all knew it.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“You have never tasted freedom, friend," Dienekes spoke, "or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enroll ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

“You are the commanders, your men will look to you and act as you do. Let no officer keep to himself or his brother officers, but circulate daylong among his men. Let them see you and see you unafraid. Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire