Archive

Quotes

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

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

—P.D. James, 1992

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

—Umberto Eco, 1980

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

—David Sedaris, 2004

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

—George Herbert, c. 1621

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

—William Hazlitt, 1823

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

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

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

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
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