Ian Fleming: Bonding

Ian Fleming was English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer. Explore interesting quotes on bonding.

Ian Fleming: 88 quotes21 likes

“Mine’s Bond – James Bond.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“… Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger

“I’m wondering whose side I ought to be on. I’m getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don’t give the poor chap a chance. There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

“Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life

“Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 5 : The Girl From Headquarters

“Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, ‘You are right. Mister Bond. That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders – all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through — these are the vices of the herd.’ Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair. ‘I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac – a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That’ – the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses – ‘is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.”

Dr. Julius No, in Ch. 15 : Pandora’s Box
Dr. No (1958)