Top 60 David Ignatius Quotes

A world in which there are no secrets that can be protected at all is going to be a pretty dangerous world.

The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they’re actually going.

As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It’s preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.

I’m as prone to ‘declinism’ as the next over-mortgaged middle-aged guy.

A disaffected America can be drawn into a civilized – but disruptive – dialogue about political change and reformation.

American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean.

‘Cyber-security’ is one of those hot topics that has launched a thousand seminars and strategy papers without producing much in the way of policy.

Chinese experts noted that the U.S. economy has rebounded from the 2008 crash more strongly than some analysts here had expected, while China’s own growth is slowing after several decades of rocket-ship acceleration.

The European Union needs to reinvent its security system. It needs to break the stovepipes that prevent sharing information, enforcing borders and protecting citizens.

Machiavelli did believe that it was better to appear to be good than to be good. If you’re good, you’re just too vulnerable, but if you appear to be good, you get all the benefits plus you can be sneaky and, when necessary, stab someone in the back.

Sometimes James Bond movies drive me crazy. They’re fun to watch, but they don’t have anything to do at all with what intelligence officers really do.

Politicians need to rethink their reflexive invocations of the Second Amendment and the idea that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge.

This experience of getting so lost in my writing that I lose track of time, or of anything outside the imagined world, is a release for me.

Panic is a natural human response to danger, but it’s one that severely compounds the risk.

Donald Trump tests the limits of campaign speech. He makes false statements and refuses to correct them. He attacks other religions and ethnic groups, inflaming domestic tension and foreign terrorist rage.

2011 is one of those years that historians are likely to look back on as a ‘hinge.’ And the truth, at once frightening and exhilarating, is that we don’t know yet which way the door will swing.

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address.

Helping Wall Street regain confidence and stability was the last thing an angry public wanted in 2009 after the markets crashed. But without such support, markets can buckle and liquidity can disappear – often for decades, as has been the case in Japan.

We haven’t usually had to face the extreme questions about liberty and order because we’re not a nation of extremists. We love freedom and good government both.

In a chaotic world, U.S. diplomats will probably have even less contact with the people they need to reach.

Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It’s beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation.

The worm of paranoia begins to eat into even the hardest adversary.

The Founding Fathers’ instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious.

If you want better behavior from bankers, then make their financial incentives more like those in the hedge-fund world – where managers have ‘skin in the game,’ and their net worth is tied to their long-term performance.

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

Thanksgiving is America’s favorite holiday because it’s a time when we put aside our cares, much as the struggling Pilgrims did nearly four centuries ago, and eat a gut-busting meal without worrying about the ‘out years.’

Things felt pretty crazy on earth in 1969, but the cosmos was friendly. Astronauts had round-trip tickets; they got home.

Enter the candidates on horseback: While military leaders can sometimes be dangerous in politics, our best generals and admirals embody the democratic values and leadership skills for which the country is yearning.

2011 was a year in which events rarely turned out as predicted, and when much of the world seemed shrouded in turmoil and uncertainty. It was difficult for government analysts back in Washington to know just where they were on the map, let alone where they were heading.

The revival of the U.S. financial system after the crash of 2008 is arguably the Obama administration’s biggest domestic policy success.

The framers hated the tyranny of King George, but they were also afraid of the mob. That’s why they put so many checks and balances into our system, to guard against the excesses of a government that might be inflamed by public passion or perverted by a dictator’s whim.

The secret of any kind of reporting is to go with a guide. So if you, you’re going to see Hezbollah in Beirut, you go with someone who knows the local people, and you’ll be fine.

I’ve tried, in ‘Bloodmoney,’ to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.

If you walk into the front hallway of the CIA, you will see, on your left, a statue of William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan. Bill Donovan was the person who created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which was America’s spy agency during World War II and then kind of morphed into what’s now the CIA.

Journalists couldn’t do their jobs overseas without taking risks, and the same is true for diplomats and intelligence officers.

The Chinese are planning a manned mission to the moon sometime after 2020, and subsequently, to Mars. The U.S. has abandoned that dream.

Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months.

The American experiment has always depended on a measure of tolerance and good sense.

It’s fashionable with the Sarah Palin set to attack Harvard and treat its graduates as elitists. But if you spend any time on campus, you see students drawn from all over the world – an astonishing number these days with roots in Asia – whose chief assets are brainpower and hard work.

If you want to hear arguments against deploying a big U.S. ground force in Syria, just ask a general.

It’s easier for China to assert its maritime power by creating artificial islands in the South China Sea than by defying the U.S. Pacific Fleet with an aircraft carrier.

European Muslims need to feel ownership of security, rather than viewing the police as an occupying army.

Making economic policy isn’t a popularity contest, especially when financial markets are in a panic.

The truth is, as you know, people like us look at what’s happening in the world, and then we project it forward. We think, ‘If I know A and B, then I’ve got to know that C and D are coming,’ and that’s kind of the way it’s been with my fiction.

Russia is emerging as an essential diplomatic and security partner for the U.S. in Syria, despite the Obama administration’s opposition to Moscow’s support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Yes, Europe needs to be more welcoming, but that’s only half of it. Muslims need to embrace the obligations of European residence and citizenship.

Foreign policy is about the execution of ideas as much as their formulation.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

As Obama prepares to begin the last year of his presidency, he stands in an unusual position on the national stage: He is the rationalist, a creature of intellect rather than emotion.

Big mistakes were made in Benghazi, and people should be held accountable. But the brave officers who staff American posts in crisis zones know how dangerous the work is.

The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails.

My guess is that before Obama departs, he will adopt some of the more aggressive military options he has been resisting, such as ‘safe zones’ inside Syria and more aggressive deployment of U.S. special forces.

Fear brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. It’s a test of character, for individuals and nations.

Prominent scientists have become increasingly convinced that the connection between carbon emissions and rising temperatures is real, but skeptics have whole truckloads of studies to demonstrate the opposite.

We’re grappling with the same issue facing all advanced economies – how to revive growth and distribute its fruits more fairly. An America that can tackle that problem head-on can perhaps help revive a stagnant global economy.