John le Carre Quotes

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

My name is E. Howard Hunt. I'm currently retired from more than 22 years in the profession of espionage.

They [spies] cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.

I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.

I always liked spy stories.

I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

There are few archbishops in espionage. He's on our side and that's all that matters. Besides, one needn't ask him to one's club.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and its failures.

Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments to a Mass, or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.

The intelligence community is built, resourced, designed, trained, and focused around secrecy. We try to obtain the secrets of our adversaries and we try and keep secret how we are doing so.

Oh, I can keep many secrets, so I would be a phenomenal secret agent. I love secrets.

Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies.

It will be the CIA's mission and my own if confirmed to ensure that the agency remains the best in the world at its core mission - collecting what our enemies do not want us to know. In short, the CIA must be the world's premier espionage organization.

No one demands more caution than a spy, and when someone has the skeleton key to minds, counter him by leaving the key of caution inside, on the other side of the keyhole.

That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.

Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

"We're going to be okay." Here's the thing about being a spy: sometimes all you have are your lies. They protect your cover and keep your secrets, and right then I needed to believe that it was true even when all the facts said otherwise.

You couldn't trust anyone or anything that belonged to the world of espionage.

We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay.

Spies could be invaluable in peacetime, once the fighting actually started, their value dropped steeply. When the swords were out, it was the information your own scouts provided that mattered, not reports from unknown people whose veracity you couldn't prove.

The New York Police Department says Iran has conducted surveillance inside New York City. They say Iranian operatives are using special mobile surveillance units. I believe they're called taxi cabs.

I got nothing. Even the spies I'm spying on who are spying on other spies got nothing.