John le Carré Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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A committee is an animal with four back legs.

John le Carré
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.

John le Carré
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

John le Carré
Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward.

John le Carré
It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

John le Carré
Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

John le Carré
Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.

John le Carré
In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.

John le Carré
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

John le Carré
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

John le Carré
The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

John le Carré
Why is it that so many men of small stature have more courage than men of size?

John le Carré
Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.

John le Carré
A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.

John le Carré
'The cat sat on the mat' is not a story. 'The cat sat on the dog's mat' is a story.

John le Carré
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

John le Carré
Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

John le Carré
There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.

John le Carré
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

John le Carré
By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

John le Carré
In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery...

John le Carré
Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

John le Carré
I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.

John le Carré
Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

John le Carré
Savages... are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.

John le Carré
You cannot make a case for not spying on terrorist organizations. You've got to spy the hell out of them.

John le Carré
Balls, the lot of it. It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.

John le Carré
But Smiley had a second reason which was fear, the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave.

John le Carré
A mole is a deep penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism.

John le Carré
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

John le Carré