Archive

Quotes

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

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

—William Hazlitt, 1823

Spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

—Umberto Eco, 1980

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

—Petronius, c. 60

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

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

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

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

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

—David Sedaris, 2004

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

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

—Francis Bacon, 1625

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837