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I think what - I think what the American people is looking for is they are looking for moral and intellectual courage and clarity, and not a sense of passivity or confusion.

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

Really what it gets down to is that my idea of the American life, the American dream, whatever, is that I can do what I wish in the privacy of my own home. And as long as I'm not hurting anyone, no one has a right to know what I do. The main thing that I have to hide is that I don't have anything to hide.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it's about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free.

The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.

Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral.

Knowledge is generally considered a good thing; so, presumably, knowing more about how the U.S. thinks and operates around the world is also good.