Quotes from The Bourne Supremacy

Robert Ludlum ·  688 pages

Rating: (155K votes)


“The cruelest thing you can do to a person who's living in panic is to offer him or her hope that turns out false. When the crash comes its intolerable.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“Perhaps conscience did not always produce cowards. Sometimes it made a man feel better about himself.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“You know, Mr. Webb, you have two commands you use with irritating frequency. 'Move' and 'Let's go.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“He wasn't smart enough to see it, said Jason Bourne. He couldn't think geometrically.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“Opportunities will present themselves. Recognize them, act on them.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy



“He may be a scholar, but he’s first a man who believes—with certain justification—that he was betrayed by his government.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“Alex, drunk or sober, made no distinction between the hours of day and night, nor did the operations he knew so well, for there was no night and day where his work was concerned. There was only the flat light of fluorescent tubes in offices that never closed.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta...Delta is for Charlie and Charlie is for Cain”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“There was too little space for their own—and they guarded their own as all Chinese had done from the earliest dynasties.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy


“For so many, death is a liberation from intolerable human conditions.”
― Robert Ludlum, quote from The Bourne Supremacy



About the author

Robert Ludlum
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date May 25, 1927
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“All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously."

At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes.

"The key word here is roots," Maestra had countered. "The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can e, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, there's a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression."

"Yeah but Maestra - "

"Don't interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser - a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician - can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing'll go wrong and it'll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol' doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we're soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it's playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That's why Switters my dearest, every time you've shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I've played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse's Mouth. And that's why when you've exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I've reminded you that you and me - you and I: excuse me - may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let's not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It's preventive medicine."

"But what about self-esteem?"

"Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.”
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