Archive

Quotes

The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.

—Umberto Eco, 1980

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

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 the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

—William Hazlitt, 1823

Secrets 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, 1998

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

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

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

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

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

For sooner will men hold fire in their mouths than keep a secret.

—Petronius, c. 60