Quotes About Suspicion

ASSUME NOTHING, believe nothing, check everything—the ABC of policing.

You don't get to be a senior investigating officer unless you have a degree in scepticism, an MA in distrust and your CV lists suspicious bastard under your hobbies.

I ended up learning magic because you can't trust the British to keep to an agreement over the long term.

It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

She had a narrow face which could fall into an expression of belligerent suspicion of such power that her teachers said they could feel it even when they were hiding in the staff room. It was her stubbornness, coupled with this expression – and routine everyday low grade racism – that kept her constantly on the verge of a school suspension.

I'd tell you, but then you'd have to section me," I said.

I listened to make sure she wasn't coming up the stairs and had a poke through the underwear drawers but got nothing except a vague sense of being really unprofessional.

Unanimity makes me itchy. It almost always hides a grave. I started digging.

People, I want to tell you Just how your friend will do They will wait to get your secret And dig a pit for you

He half-hears the familiar accusation that the policeman drones, a terribly matter-of-fact drone. Another raid on a suspected flat. Routine, routine. Evil has its eternal root in the cities. A tireless Satan, bored with the monotony of his rôle; a tireless Justice, bored with the routine of tears and pleadings, lies and guilt. There is no story in all this.

Colonel Vivian had convinced himself that Ivor Montagu's enthusiasm for Ping-Pong was a cover for something more sinister.

The Beirut beat was a demanding one. Middle Eastern politics were as complex and volatile in 1956 as they are today. But as Philby knew from his years as a correspondent in civil-war Spain, there is no better cover job for a spy than that of journalist, a profession that enables the asking of direct, unsubtle, and impertinent questions about the most sensitive subjects without arousing suspicion.

Vivian was not alone in thinking that a man who spent so much time discussing table tennis was probably a spy.

If he has confessed, one would have expected that some of the Abwehr officials closely connected to Artist and Tricycle would have ceased to carry out their normal functions"—like breathing.

Lo peor que puede sucederle a un espía es creer que lo aman, que se halla en una relación entre iguales, que no lo están manipulando.

human behaviour, if scrutinized sufficiently intensely, can begin to seem suspicious:

The policemen agreed they were living with a most peculiar fellow. One moment he was reading classical literature in the original French and quoting Tennyson, and the next he would be discussing the best way to blow up a train.

Paranoia is born of propaganda, ignorance, secrecy and fear.

Here, then, was a truly bizarre situation: Philby was telling Moscow the truth, but was disbelieved, and allowed to go on thinking he was believed; he was deceiving the British in order to aid the Soviets, who suspected a deception, and were in turn deceiving him.

Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis.

Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. Just when you think one's all right, he turns legit.

Naturally, the quality of language changed. Certain words became suspicious and vanished from public life. Words like 'hope', 'rights', 'truth'. Anyone heard uttering those words found empty spaces around them. It wasn't long before anyone using the word 'freedom' was suspected of harbouring dangerous intentions.

I should warn you—he's not at all respectful of you," she wrote. I suspected that was an understatement.

Dudley was initially skeptical.