The Bear and the Dragon Quotes

“the motto of the whole intelligence community: ‘We bet your life.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Yet another proof that the drafters of the Constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They’d assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they’d been. One could almost hear the “Oops!” emanating from all those old graves.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC WILL ENDURE UNTIL THE DAY CONGRESS DISCOVERS THAT IT CAN BRIBE THE PUBLIC WITH THE PUBLIC’S MONEY—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Jack, the world is full of people who can only feel big by making other people look small, and the bigger the target, the better they feel about it.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“It was the oddest of political prejudices that wealth didn’t come from work, but rather from something else, a something never really described, but always implied to be suspect.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“History admires the wise, but it elevates the brave. —EDMUND MORRIS”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“One of the problems with living in a free country was that anyone outside this palace/prison could think and say whatever he wished.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“I remember when Deng said, ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.’ To which Mao responded with a livid snarl: ‘What emperor said that?”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“appears that they want what the Russians have, the new oil and gold discoveries.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Christianity—and Judaism, and Islam, which were also religions of The Book—required”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Plato said, ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Girl children, Jack thought, were God’s punishment on you for being a man.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“the main requirement to enter the political profession was nothing more nor less than the ability to be pleasant to people whom you despised, and then to do business with them as if they were bosom friends.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“Ten years later, merely by adding additional digits to be dialed, the Dutch engineer in the resistance had applied complexity theory to covert operations by creating theoretical pathways through the switching gear, thus enabling resistance fighters to call others without knowing whom they called, or even the actual telephone numbers they were calling.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“ameliorate”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“The difference between genius and stupidity was that genius knew that it had limits.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon: A classic, heart-racing Tom Clancy thriller

“The difference between a wise man and a fool is the magnitude of his mistakes. You don’t trust a fool with anything important.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon: A classic, heart-racing Tom Clancy thriller

“Politics is the art of compromise, the art of getting the important things you want, while giving to others the less important things they want, and doing so in such a way that you’re the one doing the giving, not them doing the taking—because that’s what makes you the boss.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon: A classic, heart-racing Tom Clancy thriller

“Sierra-square, Delta-square.” It was their personal code: SSDD—same shit, different day.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon: A classic, heart-racing Tom Clancy thriller

“History
admires
the wise,
but it
elevates
the brave.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon: A classic, heart-racing Tom Clancy thriller

“the drafters of the Constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They’d assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they’d been.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“the world is full of people who can only feel big by making other people look small, and the bigger the target, the better they feel about it.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“The difference between a wise man and a fool is the magnitude of his mistakes.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“the purpose of spending money, something for which all women seemed to have a genetic predisposition.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“he who shouts too loudly is first to be silenced.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“People who broke the law in any society knew about the possible consequences going in, and what happened when they got caught was their problem, not his.”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon

“That’s damned likely,” Gant interjected”
― Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon