Secrecy Quotes - Page 11

• 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

  Dodge, Vices, Doe

  c.1910 Quoted in Alleyne Ireland An Adventure with a Genius, ch.4.

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• Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everythingin every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary.

  Salman Rushdie

  Voice, Talking, Want

  "Is Nothing Sacred?" (1990)

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• The painter saw what was, an alternate
  Candor and secrecy inside the skin.

  Thom Gunn

  Skins, Saws, Candor

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• Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Trust, Tyranny

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.325, Penguin

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• Secrecy destroys accountability.

  Ralph Nader

  Accountability, Political

  Ralph Nader (2014). “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State”, p.65, Nation Books

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• We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.

  Sissela Bok

  Breathing Space, Giving, Childhood

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• Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets, for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.

  Henry Taylor

  Betrayal, Men, Secret

  Sir Henry Taylor (1836). “The Statesman”, p.131

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• I think it's something that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about - participating in democracy, and that includes issues like what's going on and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That's an on-going thing - in a democracy you want checks and balances and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country. It's a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.

  Matt Damon

  Country, Thinking, Issues

  "The Good Shepherd - Matt Damon interview". www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society. ... There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Survival, Littles, Tradition

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• 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

  Government, Too Much, Problem

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• We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.

  Helen Thomas

  Wall, Fate, Break Through

  Phone interview on "The Majority Report" with Sam Seder, April 2, 2004.

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• The Church ever operates in full light. There is no secrecy about its doctrine, aim, or work.

  John Andreas Widtsoe

  Light, Church, Doctrine

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• [T]he democratic principle of "one man, one vote," viewed against a background of voting masses numbering several millions, only serves to demonstrate the pitiful helplessness of the inarticulate individual, who functions at the polls as the smallest indivisible arithmetical (and not always algebraic) unit. He acts in total anonymity, secrecy and legal irresponsibility.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Men, Voting, Principles

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• Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

  Bing Gordon

  Foundation

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• One always, sooner or later, comes upon a city which is an image of one's inner cities. Fez is an image of my inner self. ... The layers of the city of Fez are like the layers and secrecies of the inner life. One needs a guide. ... There were in Fez, as in my life, streets which led nowhere, impasses which remained a mystery.

  Anais Nin

  Self, Cities, Needs

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• We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Errors, Wages, Corruption

  "Encouragement of Science". J. Robert Oppenheimer's address at Science Talent Institute (March 6, 1950), as quoted in "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", Volume 7, No. 1 (pp. 6-8), January 1951.

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• How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude!

  Matthew Arnold

  Solitude, Mind, Great Ones

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• For all its apparent tolerance, the USA maintains a peculiar balance between the forces of capitalism and democracy. To achieve this I feel sure the country is guided by some hidden force; an organization working in secrecy, powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and of anyone else who gets in its way.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Country, Powerful, Usa

  "The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77". Book by Asadollah Alam, p. 169, 1991.

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• Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

  Novalis

  Perfect, Silence, Delicacy

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• A person who tells a secret, swearing the recipient to secrecy in turn, is asking of the other person a discretion which he is abrogating himself.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Secret, Asking, Swearing

  Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh (1999). “Thrones, Dominations”, p.102, Macmillan

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• From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Reading, Book, Thoughtful

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• The eighteenth-century view of the garden was that it should lead the observer to the enjoyment of the aesthetic sentiments of regularity and order, proportion, colour and utility, and, furthermore, be capable of arousing feelings of grandeur, gaiety, sadness, wildness, domesticity, surprise and secrecy.

  Penelope Hobhouse

  Sadness, Garden, Views

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• The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed.

  Bill Vaughan

  Veils, Confession, Priests

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• Children should always be brave and do something about bullying. Its not okay to stand by and let it happen. Bullies thrive off secrecy. Children should tell someone if they see someone being bullied.

  Imelda Staunton

  Bullying, Children, Brave

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• 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

  Christian, Eye, History

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages”, p.881, e-artnow

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