Secrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960Quotes
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863For sooner will men hold fire in their mouths than keep a secret.
—Petronius, c. 60Secrets define us, they mark us, they set us apart from all the others. The secrets which we preserve provide a key to who we are, deep down.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1998Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
—P.D. James, 1992The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.
—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
—Francis Bacon, 1625