Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make...

There’s been historical conflict between China and Russia for well over 1,000 years,

A lively discussion is usually helpful, because the hottest fire makes the hardest steel.

Show me an elitist, and I’ll show you a loser.

Panic is something that good operations officers plan for.

on the edge of my seat.

There are only two ways we can be beaten: we die or we give up. And we’re not giving up.

Clancy comments that the subtleties of national character can impact the world stage by making espionage more difficult. Americans were quirky by nature, making the sorts of eccentric moves that had to be followed up...

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?

Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true open of security and opportunity and fellowship and respect.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

So few people were left who knew what combat was like. People were so easy to frighten. Combat taught a man what to fear – and what to ignore.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no...

Cheating was a concept both foreign and integral to the fighting of wars.

To a man, professional soldiers despised terrorists, and each would dream about getting them in an even-up-battle; the idea of the Field of Honor had never died for the real professionals. It was the place...

America is the most inventive country in the world because everybody has access to information.

Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper.

The good old days are now.

The President was trapped – and with nearly every president, it had come about from his own words. Presidential promises and statements… The people had this annoying way of remembering them. And even if they...

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Not every story started off big enough to notice.

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: “What if?” and “What next?” (A third question, “What now?”, is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it’s more a cry than...

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

The human condition today is better than it’s ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.

One presidential advisor to another: “If the world made sense, we’d all have to find honest work.

I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part.

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.