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" 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. "
David Ignatius
Government
Love
Good
Related Quotes:
" CIA officers aren't idiots. They knew they were heading into deep water - legally and morally - when they signed up for the interrogation program. That's part of the agency's ethos - doing the hard jobs that other departments prudently avoid. "
David Ignatius
Avoid
Doing
Hard
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Become
Political
Football
" 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. "
David Ignatius
You
America
World
" Bob Gates has unusual standing in the debate about the Obama administration's foreign policy: He was defense secretary for both a hawkish President George W. Bush and a wary President Obama. He understood Bush's desire to project power and Obama's skepticism. "
David Ignatius
Desire
Power
Debate
" Panic is a natural human response to danger, but it's one that severely compounds the risk. "
David Ignatius
Human
Risk
Danger
" The revival of the U.S. financial system after the crash of 2008 is arguably the Obama administration's biggest domestic policy success. "
David Ignatius
System
Policy
Financial
" In a chaotic world, U.S. diplomats will probably have even less contact with the people they need to reach. "
David Ignatius
Will
People
World
" 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. "
David Ignatius
You
Good
Believe
" Real security will come when it's a moneymaker for private companies who want to satisfy public demand for an Internet that isn't crawling with bugs. "
David Ignatius
Internet
Want
Security
" This is a universal human dream - that brains, not brawn, will rule - and the fact that America has the world's finest institutions of higher education may be our greatest single national asset. "
David Ignatius
World
Dream
Education
" The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. "
David Ignatius
Value
Impossible
Help
" The best restraint is old-fashioned market discipline, in which financial traders know that they, personally, will lose a ton of money if they take risky bets that don't pan out. "
David Ignatius
Financial
Best
Discipline
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Challenge
Change
Someone
" I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story. "
David Ignatius
Way
Only
Spy
" Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It's beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran. "
David Ignatius
Saudi
Iran
State
" Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months. "
David Ignatius
Training
Work
Military
" Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally, they're successful; most times, they're not. But the system has rebalanced toward the basic principles of tolerance, freedom and democracy that were set forth by the Founders. "
David Ignatius
Political
Democracy
History
" Politicians often call for sanctions as a way of sounding tough when they don't want to take riskier measures. "
David Ignatius
Tough
Take
Politicians
" U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it's a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy. "
David Ignatius
Military
Power
Product
" 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.' "
David Ignatius
America
Time
Thanksgiving
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Kind
Two
Relationship
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Think
Truth
People
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Support
Partner
Russia
" The ISI is above all a paramilitary organization. It doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. It's not a very good spy agency, but it's good at running covert action. "
David Ignatius
Organization
Intelligence
Good
" Images sometimes capture particular periods in history. The unreachable green light, beckoning from across the bay in 'The Great Gatsby,' has become a symbol of the yearning of America in the 1920s. "
David Ignatius
Great
History
America
" 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. "
David Ignatius
People
American
Brave
" 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. "
David Ignatius
More
Embrace
Citizenship
" During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator. "
David Ignatius
Matters
Government
Crisis
" 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. "
David Ignatius
World
Game
You
" 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. "
David Ignatius
Own
China
Economy