Archive

Quotes

We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.

—Isocrates, c. 370 BC

I 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, 1863

If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.

—David Sedaris, 2004

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.

—George Eliot, 1860

It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

The life of spies is to know, not be known.

—George Herbert, c. 1621

Spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735