Tom Clancy
American author of both fiction and non-fiction, mostly related to the military, terrorism, and international affairs.
People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, they have more knowledge, they have more information. All this is the result of communications technology and the tools with which man has equipped himself. How is any of that bad?
Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.
I was one of the first generations to watch television. That's technology. TV is like any other kind of tool. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad? Computers are going to be even bigger. TVs are one-way. You sit there and you watch it. Computers, you interact with.
Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one — or take equivalent action, I suppose.
I like writing. It's the most fun I've ever had at anything. You can build your own little world and — like a kid with his toy trains, — except instead of trains I have tanks and ships and airplanes and things... I get to make them do all the things I want them to do, and if I don't like the way things work out, I start again.
America is a country with a First Amendment, and you're allowed to publish just about anything you want, as long as it's not real secret information. Of course, nobody really does that except for, you know, you guys in the media.
I'm a spy... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.
To truly feel like we're fighting terrorism, we need as much intelligence and infiltration as possible into known rivals of democracy. Once that information is collected, a sincere commitment must be made to thwart their effects through unified/joint military resolve.
When the first mission of Rainbow Six was actually coming together we really started to realize that we might have a hit on our hands, but hadn't really expected the runaway success.
Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?
China has a lot of people and not enough space and the Russians have not too many people and a lot of space.
I don't discuss works in progress...
I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.
In case you haven't noticed, we live in a world that is for the first time in all of recorded human history unlikely to have a major war. There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. The reason is our technology was better than theirs. Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. It was really a combination of SDI and CNN. They realized they couldn't beat us so they decided to change the ball game.
My wife will tell you I'm practically addicted to the History Channel ... and I read a lot of history.
Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle. Take the AEGIS system in the navy. It's a radar computer system for air-battle management. What it does is give the commander an extra 15 minutes to decide what he's going to do to fight a battle, and those 15 minutes are decisively important.
I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part.
The average guy is smart enough to know the difference between what works and what doesn't, and if you have bad information, sooner or later, you figure it out and you get onto something else.
The thing you have to understand about fighter pilots is they never quite grow past the stage of little boys buzzing past girls on their bicycles.
America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything. The more information available to the average person, the greater the synergy that develops from it.