A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
—P.D. James, 1992Quotes
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004I 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, 1863There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCThere is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger, 1977For sooner will men hold fire in their mouths than keep a secret.
—Petronius, c. 60Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.
—Isocrates, c. 370 BCNothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.
—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980