Mike Maden > Quotes

“A liar is a self-interested man, which means he is a rational man. He lies because he knows the honest truth bears a cost he's not willing to pay. But the honest man? He's the dangerous man. He's the one who insists on telling the truth no matter the cost. Such a man is an irrational man that cannot be reasoned or bargained with. An honest man is either your best friend or your worst enemy. Usually your enemy. Most people can't handle the truth. If you tell them the real reasons why they're fat or poor or stupid or unsuccessful in life, generally they will hate you for it.”
― Mike Maden, Tom Clancy Firing Point

“Only cowards hid their faces at public protests. Or criminals.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies,”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“When the people believe the justice system is no longer just, that the politicians are above the laws they make, that the government serves the interests of the ruling class instead of the middle and working classes; and when the history and culture and language of the people are denigrated and denied—these are the conditions that make a society ripe for civil war.” “You have just described the feelings of millions of Catalonians,” Brossa said as she took her”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“When the people believe the justice system is no longer just, that the politicians are above the laws they make, that the government serves the interests of the ruling class instead of the middle and working classes; and when the history and culture and language of the people are denigrated and denied—these are the conditions that make a society ripe for civil war.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“Thanks to Snowden, everybody knew that the Intelligence Community had secured the cooperation of many of the technology firms early on. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft had billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government, including the agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“Seventeen years after invading Afghanistan with their billion-dollar bombers and lasers and drones, who is still in charge of the Afghan countryside? The illiterate peasant with his two-hundred-dollar rifle.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“On the other hand, Silicon Valley made perfect sense as a CIA station. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the other giant social media networks constituted the most successful intelligence-gathering operation the world had ever seen. They collected and dissected terabytes of personal data from their billons of users around the world—almost always provided by the users themselves, and with their own consent.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“Preferably in a manner worthy of his cowardice. Bykov would”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“Gun control only affected the law-abiding, not the criminals.”
― Mike Maden, Hellburner

“most of them were poseurs who preferred protesting to the actual heavy lifting of making the world a better place.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“New Generation warfare was a multidimensional, nonlinear strategy that engineered and exploited social, moral, ethnic, and political tensions within a target country. It included arming and training local civilians as paramilitary units, often seeded and even led by Russian Spetsnaz special operators posing as civilian fighters. New Gen warfare also appealed to ethnic unity, and against ethnic discrimination by the local government, and pushed those narratives out into the public arena through sophisticated mass media campaigns and “fake news.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“It’s amazing how many ‘poor’ congressmen become millionaires while in public service,”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“A democracy cannot survive identity politics. Bosnians must think of themselves as Bosnian, first and always. All religions are respected in your country, and everybody has equal rights, and there has been peace. But all of that is at risk if ethnic identity trumps democratic ideals.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“New Generation warfare was a multidimensional, nonlinear strategy that engineered and exploited social, moral, ethnic, and political tensions within a target country.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“Congressional constituents were nearly as corrupt as their representatives. All of the voter hand-wringing about the deficit faded once they were confronted with the possibility that their own fat subsidy checks, cushy government jobs, generous federal contracts, or arcane university research grants could all go away if the deficit was reduced by a single penny. Spend less and somebody got less, and that made voters mad, and mad voters scared the hell out of politicians.”
― Mike Maden, Drone

“You can’t expect the foxes who run the henhouse to rewrite the rules to protect the hens, boss,” Adler said.”
― Mike Maden, Enemy Contact

“dysfunctional swamp of unscrupulous self-interest known as Washington, D.C., was considerably less than perfect,”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“Every life mattered, or none of them mattered.”
― Mike Maden, Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“I’m sorry to talk so much. History isn’t just a school subject for us. It’s our daily reality.” The red light turned green and Liliana hit the gas. “By the way, the reason why so many buildings are new is because almost ninety percent of the original ones were destroyed by the Germans throughout the war. When the Uprising ended, they razed what was left of the city to the ground in their retreat, and slaughtered two hundred thousand civilians in mass executions.”
― Mike Maden, Enemy Contact

“genius is seeing the obvious.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“Good works couldn’t erase bad memories, but they made for much better ones.”
― Mike Maden, Hellburner

“family’s name and a family’s honor is everything, don’t you think?” “No question.”
― Mike Maden, Enemy Contact

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“But once people started saying, ‘I’m a Serb,’ or ‘I’m a Muslim,’ all of a sudden people started seeing their neighbors as ‘others,’ and all of their problems were because of ‘them.’ Democracy and identity politics don’t work so well together.”
― Mike Maden, Line of Sight

“depending upon one’s metaphysical”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“So it was hard for Jack Junior not to try to live up to the example his father lived in front of him—not in order to earn his love and respect, but rather out of love and respect for the man he had the privilege of calling Dad.”
― Mike Maden, Point of Contact

“modern politics was only about emotions in the Western world these days, including here.”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point

“The nail that sticks out gets hammered.”
― Mike Maden, Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“famous dictum”
― Mike Maden, Firing Point