John le Carré Quotes

“If you're in a hole, don't dig, they say.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“We were not faced (in the cold war) in a conflict with people who are prepared to die for their cause. We weren't in conflict with people whose idea is to kill as many as they could.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“When you assimilate, you choose.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“Nothing in life… even a few broken bones, is without its reward.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“So odd to think of the Devil as a fumbler!”

The Mission Song (2006)

John le Carré Quotes about thinking

“There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“Where I kick myself is where I think I actually contributed to the myth of the intelligence services being very good.”

As quoted in "Master of the Secret World: John le Carré on Deception, Storytelling and American Hubris" by Andrew Ross, in Salon (21 October 1996); also in Conversations with John le Carré (2004) edited by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli and Judith Baughman, p. 141
Context: I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world.

“What the hell do you think spies are? Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not. They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants, playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?”

As quoted in Halliwell's Film Companion https://archive.org/details/halliwellswhoswh00hall/page/280/mode/2up (1985) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 281

“Who do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass that you admire can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me.”

from a clip from the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an alcoholic cynical British spy <br class="br">The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963) <br class="br">Source: Quoted in “The United States of America Has Gone Mad”: John le Carré on Iraq War, Israel & U.S. Militarism, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/the_united_states_of_america_has (25 December 2020)

“There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.”

Source: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963), p.231

John le Carré Quotes about war

“In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“This is a war," Leamas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all beside other wars – the last or the next.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.”

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963)

“America has entered one of its periods of historical madness”

Radio interview (November 2008)

John le Carré Quotes

“Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.”

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad" (2003)
Context: America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

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

Radio interview (November 2008)

“Blackmail is more effective than bribery.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“Savages…are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“Peace, gentlemen, it is well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979 TV series)”

The Mission Song (2006)

“We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease.”

“Elections are a Western jerk-off.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“Smiley's People (1982 TV series)”

The Mission Song (2006)

“He worked for the fleshy side of the Foreign Office and his job consisted of lunching visiting dignitaries whom no one else would have entertained in his woodshed.”

John le Carré book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)

“Luck's just another word for destiny…either you make your own or you're screwed.”

“To operate an intelligence network against the Islamist terror is terribly difficult because they don't have a central command and control center such as we would understand. Therefore you cannot penetrate at the top and find out what will happen on the ground.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“[She] reports that [the company] recently donated fifty million dollars to a major U. S. teaching hospital, plus salaries and expenses for three top clinicians and six research assistants. Corruption of university Common Room affiliations is even easier: professorial chairs, biotech labs, research foundations, etc. 'Unbought scientific opinion is increasingly hard to find.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.”

The Constant Gardener (2001)

“The neglected are too easily killed.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

“Every writer wants to be believed. But every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 film)”

“The friends of my friends are my friends.”

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

The Mission Song (2006)

“Why is it that so many men of small stature have more courage than men of size?”

The Mission Song (2006)

“You see a lot — your eyes get very painful.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.”

Smiley's People (1979)

“I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.”

The Mission Song (2006)

“If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight.”

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)