There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891For sooner will men hold fire in their mouths than keep a secret.
—Petronius, c. 60There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCSecrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
—William Hazlitt, 1823There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.
—Isocrates, c. 370 BCIt was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.
—Cory Doctorow, 2013Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.
—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968I 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, 1863The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.
—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004Secrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
—P.D. James, 1992Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger, 1977Secrets 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, 1998Spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895