Charles McCarry quote: "I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts."

I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've a...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Espionage and counterespionage go together like horse and carriage.
CHARLES MCCARRY

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.
CHARLES MCCARRY

There's nothing new about European anti-Americanism. To go to a dinner party of intellectuals in...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Anything that's secret, clandestine, loaded with such a supercargo of speculation, misinformatio...
CHARLES MCCARRY

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I go...
CHARLES MCCARRY

As an old man who remembers the intellectual exhilaration and the pleasure of having done good work ...
CHARLES MCCARRY

I have to tell you, I'm a happy man. I've lived the life I wanted to live. I've written ...
CHARLES MCCARRY

I cannot grasp the difference between killing people with drones or rifles and knives. The objective...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of say...
CHARLES MCCARRY

If I were to give you a list of names of the people, world political figures, who have been assisted...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Other writers tell me about these bushel baskets delivered at the front door. If I've gotten 50 ...
CHARLES MCCARRY

When it comes to the assignment of blame, the CIA has by and large been a luckless organization.
CHARLES MCCARRY

I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, a...
CHARLES MCCARRY

I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I mu...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it ...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere an...
CHARLES MCCARRY

China, hidden and mysterious, has always interested me.
CHARLES MCCARRY

I've certainly written a lot of things that have more or less come true. But I don't have a ...
CHARLES MCCARRY

People are dying to tell you their secrets; it's just a matter of getting the conversation going...
CHARLES MCCARRY

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
CHARLES

You should encourage a child to show off. You can say to a child, 'Stop being rude,' 'St...
CHARLES DANCE

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
CHARLES DICKENS

How sweet it is to learn the Savior's love when nobody else loves us! When friends flee, what a ...
CHARLES SPURGEON

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure...
CHARLES SPURGEON

'You are no saint,' says the devil. Well, if I am not, I am a sinner, and Jesus Christ came ...
CHARLES SPURGEON

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.
CHARLES SPURGEON

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are...
CHARLES SPURGEON

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you...
CHARLES SPURGEON

Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.
CHARLES SPURGEON

Many people cycle or swim to keep trim. But if swimming is so good for the figure, how do you explai...
CHARLES SAATCHI

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entir...
CHARLES DICKENS

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.
CHARLES EAMES

We work because it's a chain reaction, each subject leads to the next.
CHARLES EAMES

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.
CHARLES EAMES

Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to o...
CHARLES EAMES

To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number, to the specialist of an enlightened matt...
CHARLES EAMES

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.
CHARLES EAMES

It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do...
CHARLES EAMES

The real questions are: Does it solve a problem? Is it serviceable? How is it going to look in ten y...
CHARLES EAMES

Who ever said that pleasure wasn't functional?
CHARLES EAMES

Art resides in the quality of doing, process is not magic.
CHARLES EAMES

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that wa...
CHARLES EAMES

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI

It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, Can never know what tru...
CHARLES KINGSLEY

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.
CHARLES SIMIC

Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.
CHARLES SPURGEON

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that&...
CHARLES MINGUS

The possessors of wealth can scarcely be indifferent to processes which, nearly or remotely have bee...
CHARLES BABBAGE

Some kinds of nails, such as those used for defending the soles of coarse shoes, called hobnails, re...
CHARLES BABBAGE

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producin...
CHARLES BABBAGE

Telegraphs are machines for conveying information over extensive lines with great rapidity.
CHARLES BABBAGE

The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or...
CHARLES BABBAGE

Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscan...
CHARLES BABBAGE

In England, the profession of the law is that which seems to hold out the strongest attraction to ta...
CHARLES BABBAGE

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.
CHARLES BABBAGE

That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of...
CHARLES BABBAGE

The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it ne...
CHARLES BABBAGE

The fatigue produced on the muscles of the human frame does not altogether depend on the actual forc...
CHARLES BABBAGE

There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with whic...
CHARLES BABBAGE

In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race.
CHARLES BABBAGE

The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almo...
CHARLES BABBAGE

The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures.
CHARLES BABBAGE

Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the...
CHARLES BABBAGE

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes...
CHARLES BABBAGE

A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine i...
CHARLES BABBAGE

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
CHARLES DICKENS

Nothing reflects so much honor on a workman as a trial of his work and its endurance of it. So it is...
CHARLES SPURGEON

There is a mystique about psychiatry that people think that you have some kind of a magical lens, yo...
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
CHARLES LINDBERGH

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.
CHARLES V

One of the important things about temptation is, if I'm going to deal with it I'm going to h...
CHARLES STANLEY

A Christian has no right being in a fight unless it's a spiritual fight.
CHARLES STANLEY

A man can preach no better than he prays.
CHARLES STANLEY

An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the...
CHARLES STANLEY

The Bible is clear that those who fail to heed the Lord's discipline - whether nations, cities, ...
CHARLES STANLEY

Helping someone come to a saving knowledge of Christ is the greatest achievement possible.
CHARLES STANLEY

In our friendships we have to be wise that we choose godly people to be our friends. Somebody might ...
CHARLES STANLEY

Basically, there are two paths you can walk: faith or fear. It's impossible to simultaneously tr...
CHARLES STANLEY

The bottom line in the Christian life is obedience and most people don't even like the word.
CHARLES STANLEY

One of Satan's most deceptive and powerful ways of defeating us is to get us to believe a lie. A...
CHARLES STANLEY

Earthly wisdom is doing what comes naturally. Godly wisdom is doing what the Holy Spirit compels us ...
CHARLES STANLEY

Every test, every trial, every heartache that's been significant, I can turn it over and see how...
CHARLES STANLEY

What if others suffer shipwreck, yet none that sail with Jesus have ever been stranded yet.
CHARLES SPURGEON

You have to believe in a placebo or it won't work, but if it works, it's obviously working i...
CHARLES JENCKS

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
RAY CHARLES

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a fami...
CHARLES EASTMAN

The Bible tells us that God will meet all our needs. He feeds the birds of the air and clothes the g...
CHARLES STANLEY

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI

In the same way the sun never grows weary of shining, nor a stream of flowing, it is God's natur...
CHARLES SPURGEON

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in...
CHARLES DICKENS

There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.
PRINCE CHARLES

We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find t...
CHARLES STANLEY

I take big risks, but I'm not reckless about it.
LARRY CHARLES

Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.
CHARLES DUHIGG

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can...
CHARLES DICKENS

I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secure...
CHARLES KENNEDY

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
CHARLES DICKENS

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee...
CHARLES DICKENS

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exac...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon...
CHARLES BUXTON

Iron hand in a velvet glove.
CHARLES V

It takes a real man to make a true confession - a Chocolate Soldier will excuse or cloak his sin.
CHARLES STUDD

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill...
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

You can repeat things because it's on a set and there are actors. But if it's a great moment...
LARRY CHARLES

I don't want to just add another DVD to the pile. So I think, 'Is this going to have an impa...
LARRY CHARLES

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in a very Jewish neighbourhood and thought the whole worl...
LARRY CHARLES

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
CHARLES DICKENS

When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room ...
CHARLES BOWEN

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist i...
CRAIG CHARLES

I think anybody who is racist is an idiot whether they are black or white.
CHARLES BARKLEY

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
CHARLES DICKENS

'Federalism', in the context of political and media usage in Britain, has come to mean the c...
CHARLES KENNEDY

I've always resented the force of attraction that traps me here on Planet Earth. It makes me fee...
CHARLES PLATT

You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the van...
CHARLES LINDBERGH

I would not be on the level did I not confess that I always have believed that the old Browns were a...
CHARLES COMISKEY

Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rust...
CHARLES BUXTON

The quicker we get rid of the lobby system the better for all of us. I don't think in this day a...
CHARLES KENNEDY

So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
CHARLES KINGSLEY

I could never hate anyone I knew.
CHARLES LAMB

Audiences seem to have a limitless appetite for vampires and for fantasy in general. Unlike many oth...
CHARLES DANCE

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more...
CHARLES SAATCHI

Go, forget me - why should sorrow, O'er that brow a shadow fling? Go, forget me - and tomorrow, ...
CHARLES WOLFE

I've always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pompos...
CHARLES KIMBROUGH

A privilege may not be a right, but, under the constitution of the country, I do not gather that any...
CHARLES TUPPER

My wife and I met right down the street. Our single, 'Just a Kiss' is kind of about that mom...
CHARLES KELLEY

I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see w...
CHARLES DICKENS

We said that a single injustice, a single crime, a single illegality, particularly if it is official...
CHARLES PEGUY

We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
CHARLES MONTESQUIEU

There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms ...
CHARLES MACKAY

Those who think in Britain they can push the Brexit button and not have a bill to pay are seriously ...
CHARLES MICHEL

In Britain ever more, they will realize that Brexit, well, has consequences - economic, commercial, ...
CHARLES MICHEL

God buries His workmen but carries on His work.
CHARLES WESLEY

Make em laugh; make em cry; make em wait.
CHARLES READE

The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if th...
CHARLES HUGHES

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is...
CHARLES HUGHES

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of w...
CHARLES DICKENS

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
CHARLES DICKENS

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will al...
CHARLES DARWIN

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new ...
CHARLES DARWIN

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false v...
CHARLES DARWIN

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
CHARLES DARWIN

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explan...
CHARLES DARWIN

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
CHARLES DARWIN

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
CHARLES DARWIN

Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research and University of Chicago persuasively argue ...
CHARLES DUHIGG

Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.
CHARLES RICHARDS

There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, ...
CHARLES DUHIGG

You've got to take the road you need to take, and only you can make that calculation. Not your d...
CHARLES SCHWAB

All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Unsurprisingly, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) - once a luxury for room-sized computer instal...
CHARLES PLATT

I was an enormous fan of Dan Slott's run, and John Byrne's run was a big deal for me. I foun...
CHARLES SOULE

These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for thr...
CHARLES STURT

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tear...
CHARLES DICKENS

You have been the last dream of my soul.
CHARLES DICKENS

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
CHARLES DICKENS

As a young analyst just out of Stanford business school in the 1960s, I got to really understand wha...
CHARLES SCHWAB

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on...
CHARLES KURALT

I'd rather go by bus.
PRINCE CHARLES

A leader may symbolize and express what is best in people, like Pericles, or what is worst, like Hit...
CHARLES YOST

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happ...
CHARLES DICKENS

I have made so many mistakes, and such really stupid ones, I would start blubbing away if I could re...
CHARLES SAATCHI

This is very true: For my words are my own, and my actions are my ministers.
CHARLES II

Questions focus our thinking. Ask empowering questions like: What's good about this? What's not perf...
CHARLES CONNOLLY

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.
CHARLES STEINMETZ

Success is that old ABC - ability, breaks, and courage.
CHARLES LUCKMAN

Watching cold fusion is like watching water boil in slow motion. First, sufficient deuterium has to ...
CHARLES PLATT

I took Bobby Kennedy through the delta and he cried like a baby.
CHARLES EVERS

The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to cont...
CHARLES DARWIN

I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much belove...
CHARLES DARWIN

Without speculation there is no good and original observation.
CHARLES DARWIN

The presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labor for their daily bread, is impor...
CHARLES DARWIN

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most resp...
CHARLES DARWIN

It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong'...
CHARLES DARWIN

...it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
CHARLES DARWIN

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find o...
CHARLES LAMB

The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his own.
CHARLES CHURCHILL

Do not expect the world to look bright, if you habitually wear gray-brown glasses.
CHARLES ELIOT

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
CHARLES BUXTON

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an...
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, wor...
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each ot...
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

You will never exaggerate when you speak good things of God. It is not possible to do so. Try, dear ...
CHARLES SPURGEON

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, u...
CHARLES BURNEY

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
CHARLES LAMB

Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 I am disposed to say gra...
CHARLES LAMB

These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.
CHARLES LAMB

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accide...
CHARLES LAMB

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.
CHARLES LAMB

The greatest friend of truth is time, her greatest enemy is prejudice, and her constant companion hu...
CHARLES COLTON

Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.
CHARLES JAMES

Pain is life--the sharper, the more evidence of life.
CHARLES LAMB

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
CHARLES DEGAULLE

Why did the Clinton Administration wait from 1995 to 1998 to tighten security and bolster counterint...
CHARLES BASS

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the int...
CHARLES SUMNER

The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.
CHARLES SUMNER

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of...
CHARLES LINDBERGH

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true,...
CHARLES KINGSLEY

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from the dead -- fr...
CHARLES KINGSLEY

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead, - fr...
CHARLES KINGSLEY

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

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Charles McCarry

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

Charles McCarry

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