Top 45 Valerie Plame Quotes

Our critics would love nothing more for us to go away and just be quiet. And we won’t give them that satisfaction. We have young children that, one day, when they understand more of what’s happened and what’s transpired, we wanna be able to say to them, you know, we did our best. And we told the truth.

In many, many parts of the world, being a female, you’re really just wallpaper. If you take care to blend in, no one would think in a thousand years that you were doing anything suspicious.

Of course the job has a lot of glamour. But it really is about being smarter than your average bear. Your mind is your best weapon. It’s great when you’re a good shot with an AK-47, but it’s about being clever.

We’ve made some good beginnings with the New START Treaty, but a lot more can be done.

Of course, when you’re a parent, that’s your paramount concern, for your children, and there were some very credible and frightening threats, and the agency declined to provide any security, and it felt like a betrayal all over again. It was really painful.

I love my career. I thought, if I was lucky, I would retire as a senior intelligence officer, still working on the issues of counterproliferation. But that didn’t happen, so – new chapter.

I really believe the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons is the world’s most ominous threat.

To my knowledge, no one has died from a cyberattack… but there is a gray area between peace and war.

When I was outed on July 14th, 2003, I was, until that moment, covert. That means no one outside of a very small circle knew where I really worked.

Americans want to believe that we are a nation of laws, and no one is above them, including the president. Mr. Trump’s and his associates’ actions during his campaign and during his brief time in office are extremely troubling.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

There’s a huge impact on national security and intelligence. The new normal is going to be more and more of these hacks, whether it’s Target or Home Depot or the Office of Personnel Management or Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos.

After President Obama’s election in 2008, there was a widespread hope that it would mark an end to unseemly partisan nastiness.

Joe was being called a liar and a traitor; I’m being accused of nepotism, of being a glorified secretary. The stresses that that places on an individual and, of course, a marriage were tremendous. It was – there were some dark days.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There’s a need for classified information.

I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.

I’ve moved on to Plan B now, writing novels.

When an issue is so fraught with partisanship, a special counsel provides some modicum of transparency and accountability rather the the veil of politics.

Over the years, from serving in the CIA to sitting on non-profit boards, I have observed first-hand what the addition of even one woman to a meeting or to a decision-making body can do. Put simply, in very many instances, group dynamics improve markedly.

When I was happily married and found myself pregnant, I just thought that this would be just the next, normal chapter. I was absolutely thrilled. So what a surprise it was when it turned out to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I come from a family in which public service was something to aspire to.

There is no question that what we are seeing – the horrible advance of ISIS – goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

I want to shine a spotlight on showing how dangerous Trump and his Twitter button can be.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

Leaks are always bad news.

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.

Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.

I think feeling bitter or angry is really useless.

When President Ronald Reagan negotiated some significant arms reduction deals with the then-Soviet Union, he was considered a real hero, someone who was advocating for peace.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in 1996 set out to ban nuclear tests, is an important step, but we need to do more – and we can.

In the CIA, they recruit you to be an officer, an ops officer, in part due to how well you cope with stress and how well you adapt to new situations.

Privatization is more efficient and effective in some cases, but not in intelligence.

I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I’m the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

We need the best and the brightest to go into public service.

So many times, genuine health workers and genuine NGO folks are really just trying to help other humans in whatever capacity they can. But they are perceived as being CIA, and therefore, it blocks their effectiveness.

The fundamental problem is not that Trump has access to the nuclear launch codes, but that they exist at all.

I didn’t appreciate how special and sometimes strange my CIA world was – until it suddenly and spectacularly ended in a newspaper column.

I know having a Jason Bourne all alone in a field firing at bad guys is much more dramatic, but it’s not real.

There is not adequate whistleblower protection.

I find it really hard to relate to the Bond women or Angelina Jolie in ‘Salt.’ And of course it’s informed by my experiences and the people I’ve met along the way and the places I’ve been.

I have always been appalled by the depiction of female CIA operatives.

These are issues we’ve been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It’s all about power and the abuse of power.