Archive

Quotes

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

—David Sedaris, 2004

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

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

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

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

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

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735

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

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

—Petronius, c. 60

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

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

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

—George Herbert, c. 1621