Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

John le Carre

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

John le Carre

leadership inspirational reality

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

John le Carre

power truth thinking

In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.

John le Carre

lines jobs book

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak. What I see in my country, progressively over these years, is that the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. The rich have become indifferent through a philosophy of greed, and the poorer have become hopeless because they're not properly cared for. That's actually something that is happening in many Western societies. Your own, I am told, is not free from it.

John le Carre

philosophy country years

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

John le Carre

ordinary men believe

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

John le Carre

who-we-are

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

John le Carre

experience dream love

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

John le Carre

tragedy clever thinking

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

John le Carre

sacrifice soul men

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

John le Carre

cat stories writing

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

John le Carre

spy population literature

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

John le Carre

persons identity men

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

John le Carre

childhood balance thinking

People are very secretive - secret even from themselves.

John le Carre

secretive secret people

It was man who ended the Cold War in case you didn't notice. It wasn't weaponry, or technology, or armies or campaigns. It was just man. Not even Western man either, as it happened, but our sworn enemy in the East, who went into the streets, faced the bullets and the batons and said: we've had enough. It was their emperor, not ours, who had the nerve to mount the rostrum and declare he had no clothes. And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day.

John le Carre

army technology war

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

John le Carre

betrayal betrayed love

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

John le Carre

teaching two father

Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.

John le Carre

artist real writing

It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.

John le Carre

eight solitude should-have

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

John le Carre

shots not-happy