Archive

Quotes

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

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

—George Herbert, c. 1621

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

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

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

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

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

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

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

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

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968