Secrecy Quotes - Page 2

• What thou intendest to do, speak not of before thou doest it.

  Pittacus of Mytilene

  Speak

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• Secrecy is for losers. . . . It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  War, Government, Support

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• Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.

  Elia Kazan

  Hysteria, Facts, Mystery

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• Keep your misfortunes to yourself.

  William Hazlitt

  Misfortunes

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• There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security.

  Robert Byrd

  Loss, Erosion, People

  "Life in the Shadows of the Empire" by Eamon Martin, www.counterpunch.org. March 18, 2006.

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• We must regard all matter as an intrusted secret which we believe the person concerned would wish to be considered as such. Nay, further still, we must consider all circumstances as secrets intrusted which would bring scandal upon another if told.

  Leigh Hunt

  Believe, Secret, Wish

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• You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wine, Character, Artist

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II”, p.434

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• Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.

  Lucretius

  Past, Men, Scene

  "De Rerum Natura". IV, 1,182,

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• The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

  Niels Bohr

  Political, Democracy, Weapons

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• If you wish another to keep your secret, first keep it to yourself.

  Seneca the Younger

  Secret, Wish, Firsts

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• A resolution that is communicated is no longer within thy power; thy attentions become now the plaything of chance; he who would have his commands certainly carried out must take man by surprise.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Attention, Chance

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• We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, Truth, Philosophy

  Kennedy, John F. (1963). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962”, p.163, Best Books on

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• Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Friendship, Secret, Chastity

  Jeremy Taylor (1834). “The Beauties of J. Taylor: Selected from His Works with an Essay on His Life and Writings”, p.569

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• If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Friendship, Keeping Secrets, Enemy

  "The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac".

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• We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Secret

  "Characters", IV, 1688.

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• As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature--in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing--he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural.

  Honore de Balzac

  Simple, Men, Secret

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• Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.

  George Eliot

  Darkness, Secret, Wish

  George Eliot (2016). “Romola: Top Novelist Focus”, p.90, 谷月社

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

  Benjamin Franklin

  Funny, Hilarious, 4th Of July

  Poor Richard's Almanac for 1735 and 1741.

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• Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Fashion, Atheist, Freedom

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• We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

  Robert Frost

  Clever, Philosophy, Secret

  Witness Tree (1942) "The Secret Sits"

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• A government by secrecy benefits no one. It injures the people it seeks to serve; it damages its own integrity and operation. It breeds distrust, dampens the fervor of its citizens and mocks their loyalty.

  Russell B. Long

  Loyalty, Integrity, Government

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• Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Life, Cities, Yellow

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.29, Atlântico Press

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• Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

  Lord Acton

  Reality, Justice, Political

  "Lord Acton and his Circle". Book by Abbot Gasquet, 1906.

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• Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

  John le Carre

  News, Literature, Misinformation

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• Two may keep counsel putting one away!

  William Shakespeare

  Two, May

  William Shakespeare (2009). “CliffsComplete Romeo and Juliet”, p.93, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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