Top 100 Quotes About Secrecy
#1. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.
Joseph Pulitzer
#3. Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.
Charles Caleb Colton
#4. The auditorium, named after a dead Queens politician is windowless in honor of the secrecy in which he lived and, probably, the bank vaults he frequented.
Jimmy Breslin
#5. Believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind, - that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite
Friedrich Nietzsche
#6. I was 15 years old when I first heard the name Mandela, or Madiba, as he is fondly known in Africa. In apartheid South Africa he was public enemy number one. Shrouded in secrecy, myth and rumour, the media called him 'The Black Pimpernel'.
Kumi Naidoo
#7. The causes of familial discord and distance are countless, but the results are often the same: secrecy, blame, sadness, hurt, confusion, and feelings of loss and grief.
Sharon Salzberg
#9. This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.
Carroll Quigley
#10. Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
Georg Simmel
#11. The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them.
Glenn Haybittle
#12. There is a meaning of life but I've been sworn to secrecy.
Brian Spellman
#13. We plan to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the preparation of the budget. We also plan to open up the process of government appointments.
Kim Campbell
#14. Secrecy doesn't attach to particular parties; it attaches to power. All of the bull work is in place for whomever succeeds. That's my concern.
Ted Gup
#15. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!
Michael Faraday
#16. Abuse of any kind thrives off secrecy. I felt like if I started talking about it, maybe other people would. I wanted to break the silence. Now I feel I'm in a much better place emotionally than I've ever been anytime in my life.
Chris Witty
#17. Oracle, for example, has even hired people to dumpster dive for information about its competitor, Microsoft. It's not even illegal, because trash isn't covered by data secrecy laws.
Kevin Mitnick
#18. There are many matters and many circumstances in which consciousness is undesirable and silence is golden, so that secrecy can be used as a marker to tell us that we are approaching the holy.
Gregory Bateson
#19. Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like paranoid speculation.
Max Brooks
#20. Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.
Noam Chomsky
#21. Each survivor chooses how secrecy is going to fit into their healing. Some share with their immediate family, but not their childhood family and friends.
Jeanne McElvaney
#22. Secrecy in suits goes a great way towards success.
Francis Bacon
#23. The secrecy of Masonry is an honorable secrecy; any good man may ask for her secrets; those who are worthy will receive them. To give them to those who do not seek, or who are not worthy, would but impoverish the Fraternity and enrich not those who received them.
William Howard Taft
#25. It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order.
Sun Tzu
#26. Spencer talked to Trace."
Aha! "That
"
"And Trace told Dare. But no one told me because you swore everyone to secrecy, and I have to tell you, that annoys the hell out of me."
-Jackson and Arizona
Lori Foster
#27. Leaks are good. There is too much secrecy in our government. Sometimes the government knows about a problem and it takes a leak to embarrass the bureaucracy and get them to do something about it.
Joan Claybrook
#28. What would the Russian Bear and the American Eagle do if they discovered our paradise? Our secrecy is our shield!
Andrew Ryan
#29. Under the Bush administration, openness and accountability have been replaced by secrecy and evasion of responsibility. They abuse their power, conceal their actions from the American people, and refuse to hold officials accountable.
Edward Kennedy
#30. Constant you are, But yet a woman; and for secrecy, No lady closer; for I well believe Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know.
William Shakespeare
#31. Ghosts from the past weave spells in the present to draw a veil of secrecy over the future.
Sean Best
#32. We all know Damian's big on secrecy. The man makes the CIA look like a gabfest. He is Mr Need-To-Know.
As in, students never need to know.
Tera Lynn Childs
#33. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.
Charles Dickens
#34. From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.
George McGovern
#35. jointly with his half-brother. Secrecy was of the essence and the impact of their successful forays was beginning
Annie Seaton
#36. Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
#37. Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
Brene Brown
#38. There's always been something illicit about the way I work. I'm photographing people I don't know, when nobody else is home - there's a necessary degree of secrecy.
Katy Grannan
#39. when companies are not transparent, communities fear that such secrecy covers insincerity, dishonesty, and trickiness. Transparency
Luc Zandvliet
#40. Doomed to practice it day after day, even to the extent of dipping his nib in orange juice to make the words invisible, he has fallen in love with secrecy.
Paul West
#41. We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
#43. The White House is the leakiest place I've ever been in. (On special measures to ensure secrecy of plans to bomb Libya)
Ronald Reagan
#44. Anyone who studies declassified documents soon becomes aware that government secrecy is largely an effort to protect policy makers from scrutiny by citizens, not to protect the country from enemies.
Noam Chomsky
#46. Given the pervasive secrecy of the Bush-Cheney administration, and the sorry consequences of that disposition, President Barack Obama's early emphasis on openness in government seems almost inevitable.
Noah Feldman
#47. If governments did not mislead their citizens so often, there would be less need for secrecy, and if leaders knew they could not rely on keeping the public in the dark about what they are doing, they would have a powerful incentive to behave better.
Peter Singer
#48. No, It's not fair. But I was thinking more along the lines of the Pentagon and Washington itself. Sometimes I suspect that those who are running things might grow addicted to power. Secrecy's essential in wartime, but once in place, will it ever be removed?
Marge Piercy
#49. How many minds
almost all the great ones
were formed in secrecy and solitude!
Matthew Arnold
#50. For the Order wishes to be secret and to work in silence; for thus it is better secured from the oppression of the ruling powers, and because this secrecy gives a greater zest to the whole.
Adam Weishaupt
#51. The secrecy that shrouded the vote counting by the special election committee cast doubts on the results and lacks transparency.
Hosni Mubarak
#53. The tremendous secrecy of alleys between houses
Jack Kerouac
#54. Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it's also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.
Bill Keller
#55. Government ought to be all outside and no inside ... Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.
Woodrow Wilson
#56. Where's the line, Sarah? What separates an informal effort from a rogue operation?" "Success," she countered. "And secrecy.
Matthew Palmer
#57. All Cabinet Ministers and other senior ministers are still sworn in as Privy Counsellors for life. The oath (which dates back to the thirteenth-century and has been described as Britain's oldest secrecy provision) commits them to keep all advice to the monarch secret.
Clive Ponting
#58. A Tong can perhaps be defined as a mutual benefit society for people with a common interest which is illegal or dangerously marginal - hence, the necessary secrecy.
Hakim Bey
#60. To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
Henry David Thoreau
#61. Bees will not work except in darkness;
Thought will not work except in Silence;
neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.
Maurice Maeterlinck
#62. Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy.
Donna Tartt
#63. Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.
John Le Carre
#64. People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.
William Hazlitt
#66. It is much more convenient not to be a public company. As a private company you don't have to give information to the public. Secrecy is an important factor of success in the commodity business.
Marc Rich
#67. The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Niels Bohr
#68. But although she interacted with so many people during the day, no one could actually say that they were close to her. There is an aloofness to the permanently heartbroken, a secrecy. There was something impenetrable about her. There was a door that she had closed, which no one could get in.
Heather O'Neill
#69. Most child welfare agencies tend to embrace secrecy because the people who lead them tend to be mediocre and don't want you to see how poor a job they are doing.
Richard Wexler
#71. Privacy is something that we maintain for the good of ourselves and others. Secrecy we keep to separate ourselves from others, even those we love.
Mary Alice Monroe
#72. The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.
Edward Gibbon
#73. Changing much-cherished bank secrecy laws is worth the effort. Corruption, tax evasion, and the capture of natural resource revenues undermine the rule of law, weaken the social fabric, erode citizens' trust in institutions, fuel conflict and insecurity, and hamper job creation.
Sri Mulyani Indrawati
#74. Anything that inspires addiction or obsession - substances, entertainment, beauty, secrecy - is dangerous in that it can lead to isolation, self-absorption, and disconnection, to paralyzed stasis: an immobility that gathers like a force.
Greg Carlisle
#75. The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films.
Karen Allen
#76. But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistants to secrecy, honor and allegiance under a notarial oath.
Harry Houdini
#77. As a matter of historical analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated in an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets.
Jill Lepore
#78. They didn't just live with secrets. Secrecy surrounded their entire lives.
Anthony Horowitz
#79. And here, in thought, to thee-
In thought that can alone,
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne,
By winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven.
Edgar Allan Poe
#80. Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
Georg Simmel
#81. The Air Force had put out a secret order for its pilots to capture UFOs. For the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee for investigating official secrecy concerning proof that UFOs are real machines under intelligent.
Donald Keyhoe
#82. If I were to disclose all their rituals, I think that it would be easy to prove that witches are not diabolists; but the oaths are solemn and the witches are my friends. I would not want to hurt their feelings. They have secrets which to them are sacred. They have good reason for their secrecy.
Gerald Gardner
#83. I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.
Ron Paul
#84. Despotism alone can provide that atmosphere of secrecy which favors crooked dealing and enables the freebooters of finance to make illicit fortunes.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#85. I'm sure that in Germany people also took an oath of secrecy. We know what that eventually led to. If it works that way with us, the sanctions for breaking the secrecy are nothing compared to the sanctions there could be if we're silent. All
Studs Terkel
#86. Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.
Ramsey Clark
#87. In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.
Gilbert Parker
#88. A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
John Adams
#89. Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.
Francis Bacon
#90. Be open in everything with your partner, because where there is secrecy, it can mistakenly come off as being sneaky; where you just may be innocently quiet.
Anthony Liccione
#91. Mormonism was born amid secrecy, and throughout its existence as a religion it has sustained a close yet complex relationship to the arts of silence.
Noah Feldman
#92. Without integrity, secrecy can become a license for opportunists to distort and corrupt the system.
Monika Jensen-Stevenson
#93. Excessive administration secrecy ... feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public's confidence in government.
John McCain
#94. Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.
Jill Lepore
#95. Everyone accepts that there are inevitably little areas of secrecy reserved for specialists; as regards things in general, many believe they are in on the secret.
Guy Debord
#96. The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.
Ian McEwan
#97. The third factor is the natural predisposition of bureaucracies, both governmental and private, to exploit secrecy to whatever degree they are licensed to do so, and in this administration they're given virtually carte blanche.
Ted Gup
#98. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things.
D.H. Lawrence
#99. Once the Xerox copier was invented, private diplomacy died. There's no such thing as secrecy. It's just a question of whether it's leaked or revealed openly.
Andrew Young
#100. You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up. You have to do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding.
Jamie Fellner
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