"The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place." Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th Century German Philosopher

“Intelligence today is not merely a profession, but like most professions it has taken on the aspects of a discipline: it has developed a recognized methodology; it has developed a vocabulary; it has developed a body of theory and doctrine; it has elaborate and refined techniques. It now has a large professional following. What it lacks is a literature. From my point of view, this is a matter of greatest importance. As long as this discipline lacks a literature, its method, its vocabulary, its body of doctrine, and even its fundamental theory run the risk of never reaching full maturity.”....Sherman Kent

For " Intelligence " is the welding into a whole of information derived from a dozen different sources, some trustworthy, some not, and the weighing of such information against already known facts and outstanding deductions." - The Secret Corps - A Tale of "Intelligence" On All Fronts, by Captain Ferdinand Tuohy, 1920, John Murray, Albermarle Street, London

 

"Much of intelligence is predicated on what has gone before. We cannot start from scratch in time of crisis, find intelligence personnel, organize them, have them procure the information and collate it with past information - and do all this in time to be of much help. The time to set up our intelligence organization is NOW"

Editor of Infantry Journal Press, inside cover of the book The Future of American Secret Intelligence, by George S. Pettee, 1946

 

" Be bold...Take Risks....Just don't make any mistakes"....Mark L. Lowenthall, Keynote, 25th Anniversary of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts Conference, May 2005, Washington D.C.

 

"This was a failure of policy, management, capability, and, above all, a failure of imagination.”

Thomas S. Kean, Chairman, 9/11 Commission Report

 

"Its hard to make predictions, especially about the future"

Yogi Berra

 

"Describing a past event is not intelligence analysis, it is history. True intelligence analysis is always predictive"

Robert M. Clark, Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach (2004, CQ Press) 

 

"Richard E. Morgan emphasizes the importance of guarding against an overreaction to the disclosures of the mid-70s. While acknowledging the need for many of the recent reforms that seek to establish accountability, guarantee privacy, and protect dissent, he cautions against limitations on domestic intelligence gathering that could seriously hamper government's ability to prevent crime, particularly terrorism".

From Domestic Intelligence: Monitoring Dissent in America by Richard E. Morgan, University of Texas Press, 1980, ISBN 0-292-71529-3 

 

"But detecting threats and preempting them before they are carried out may leave no room for successful prosecution - which is a clue to the difficulty of adapting a law enforcement agency to the intelligence role. Prosecutable crime is the life blood of law enforcement. The goal of law enforcement is to prevent crime, but the means is to prosecute criminals"

Richard Posner, Judge, U.S. Court of APpeals, 7th Circuit, Remaking Domestic Intelligence (2005, Hoover Institution Press)

 

“The only thing worse than no intelligence, is corrupt intelligence”

Paul Sperry, author of Infiltration, at a lecture on 7/28/2005, Luxe Hotel, Los Angeles

 

"The opponent who is better informed than his adversary is at once in a position possessing immense advantages, as his plans are based on better known and safer data. He, in fact, knows, where his adversary has to guess. The incalculable advantage of a good system of obtaining Intelligence is at once apparent." (from Military Intelligence: A New Weapon in War by Walter C. Sweeney, Lt Colonel, U.S. Army, Frederick Stokes Company, 1924)

 

“What is disturbing is that many of today’s terrorist groups do not have a traditional political agenda. They do not worry about offending. They do not care about retaliation. They are uninterested in negotiation. They have no interest in making themselves known before they act. There are no trade-offs, few perceived costs to acting”

June 24, 1998 testimony of the CSIS Director to the Canada Senate Special Committee on Security and Intelligence

    "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."

Desiderius Erasmus quotes (Dutch Priest, Humanist and Editor of the New Testament, 1469-1536)

“Most of our progress has been built on the basis of failure rather than success”…