Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

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

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

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

Secrecy lies at the very core of power.

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

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

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

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

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

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

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

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

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