SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) is a fictional global terrorist organisation featured in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, the films based on those novels, and James Bond video games. Led by evil genius and supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the supranational organisation first formally appeared in the novel Thunderball (1961) and in the movie Dr. No (1962). SPECTRE is not aligned to any nation or political ideology, enabling the later Bond books and Bond films to be regarded as apolitical. SPECTRE began in the novels as a small group of criminals but became a vast international organisation with its own SPECTRE Island training base in the films, to replace the Soviet SMERSH.
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Famous quotes containing the word spectre:
“The acorn’s not yet
Fallen from the tree
That’s to grow the wood,
That’s to make the cradle,
That’s to rock the bairn,
That’s to grow a man,
That’s to lay me.”
—Unknown. The Cauld Lad of Hilton or, The Wandering Spectre (l. 2–8)
“But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody Shirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)