A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
—P.D. James, 1992Quotes
Spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger, 1977To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.
—Cory Doctorow, 2013Secrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.
—Isocrates, c. 370 BCThe first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.
—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885