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

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

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

—George Herbert, c. 1621

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

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

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.

—George Eliot, 1860

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

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

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

—David Sedaris, 2004

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

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.

—Isocrates, c. 370 BC

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

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

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

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

—P.D. James, 1992

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

—William Hazlitt, 1823

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

—Umberto Eco, 1980

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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