Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

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

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

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

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

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