Informants Quotes

• The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter's bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants.... He must go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes.

  Bronislaw Malinowski

  Notebook, Beach, Garden

  Myth in Primitive Psychology ch. 5 (1926)

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• Looking for an entirely reliable informant is like looking for a chaste mistress.

  Cassandra Clare

  Mistress, Simile, Chaste

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.206, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Law enforcement has always had informants and people they've had to deal with, who walk a certain line. They're choosing between the lesser of two evils. They're befriend one person to gain access to another person, who's a bigger fish.

  Mike Colter

  Law, Two, People

  Source: collider.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most investigators don't even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes they'd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often.

  Andrew Vachss

  Mean, Would Be, Cop

  12 Copy quote

• The regime of control tightens inexorably in our schools, many of which now have video cameras, police patrols, chain-link fences, random unannounced locker searches, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, networks of informants, undercover police posing as students, and a comprehensive system of passes so that there is a record of each student's authorized whereabouts at all times. What a perfect preparation for life in a prison or a totalitarian society!

  Charles Eisenstein

  Dog, School, Perfect

  10 Copy quote

• What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I'm a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.

  Julian Assange

  Money, Men, Years

  110 Copy quote

• With its brutal excesses and reliance on snitches and finks as informants, I don't think it's far off-kilter to describe the modern-day drug war as oddly similar to the Salem witch trials.

  Joel Miller

  War, Thinking, Witch Trials

  11 Copy quote

• Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them.

  Kent V. Flannery

  Branches, Study, Process

  15 Copy quote

• A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police. But you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or - two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto.

  Trevor Noah

  Doors, Two, People

  "Trevor Noah Says He Grew Up 'In The Shadow Of A Giant' (His Mom)". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 16, 2016.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.

  Ally Carter

  Liars, People, May

  Ally Carter (2011). “Only the Good Spy Young”, p.214, ReadHowYouWant.com

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.

  John le Carre

  Memories, Military, Book

  "John le Carré: 'I was a secret even to myself'". www.theguardian.com. April 12, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Grimm brothers always said that their informants were women, which is possibly not true, women of the people. There is the constant evocation of women's voices, in the collecting and arrangement of these stories, and yet the message of so many of them is incredibly misogynist. I was very puzzled by that, and that book explores that contradiction.

  Marina Warner

  Brother, Book, Voice

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Hands, Nuts, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We've become a lunatic asylum.

  Robert David Steele

  Order, Trying, United States

  8 Copy quote

• No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants. ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment. ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest.

  James Bovard

  War, Order, Should Have

  5 Copy quote

• The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

  Lynne Stewart

  Decision, Important, Today

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Joel Chandler Harris, who created a multi billion dollar industry, everything from his books, to Disney's "Song of the South" based upon the Uncle Remus stories. He got his start by transcribing the stories of slave Informants. I'm sure that none them got a dime.

  Ishmael Reed

  Song, Uncles, Book

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.

  Jeremy Hammond

  Wikileaks, World, Surveillance

  "Jeremy Hammond Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison". www.huffingtonpost.com. November 15, 2013.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• One question that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands. Irish-Americans remember the fairies. Norwegian-Americans the nisser, Greek-Americans the vrykólakas, but only in relation to events remembered in the Old Country. When I once asked why such demons are not seen in America, my informants giggled confusedly and said, 'They're scared to pass the ocean, it's too far,' pointing out that Christ and the apostles never came to American.

  Richard Mercer Dorson

  Country, Crazy, Ocean

  7 Copy quote

• Somhow those Ten Men -- at the time they were called Recruiters, of course -- discovered that Constance had been at the library. Most likely one of their informants saw her come out, because it was on that very day that the brutes showed up and threatened the librarians. Who told them nothing, incidentally.' 'The same thing happened in Holland,' Kate reflected. 'You'd think these guys would learn their lesson -- librarians know how to keep quiet.' 'It helps to ask politely,' said Mr. Benedict

  Trenton Lee Stewart

  Men, Thinking, Guy

  4 Copy quote

• But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.

  Orson Scott Card

  Winning, Naughty, Risk

  Orson Scott Card (2003). “Shadow Puppets”, p.333, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

  Junot Diaz

  Pain, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote