Quotes About Deception

the end, the difference between them is a matter of moral judgment: Gordievsky was on the side of the good; and Ames was on his own side.

Walker prepared his flock, and in August more than a thousand homing pigeons, each carrying a list of questions deliberately framed to suggest a looming attack, were dropped in a flapping deluge on Calais and Brittany. "The mere fact of increasing the number of pigeons used has a certain deceptive value," Robertson gleefully reported.

Yet this honesty demanded emotional deception, fraud in a virtuous cause, a sacred duplicity. He was telling MI6 every secret truth he could find while lying to his colleagues and his bosses, his family, his best friend, his estranged wife and his new lover.

The central plank of the deception was to be nailed down by planting false information through the double agents. Cockade was not quite the grand roll of the dice envisaged by Masterman, but it was the most ambitious gamble so far.

Philby, the veteran Soviet spy, was now in charge of Britain's anti-Soviet intelligence operations, in a position to inform Moscow not only of what Britain was doing to counter Soviet espionage but also of Britain's own espionage efforts against Moscow. The fox was not merely guarding the henhouse but building it, running it, assessing its strengths and frailties, and planning its future construction.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term "useful idiot," poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing

The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.

Sam Brewer enjoyed discussing Middle Eastern politics with Philby; Philby enjoyed sleeping with his wife.

The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was "charm", that intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally lethal English quality.

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.

The trickiest aspect of lying is maintaining the lie. Telling an untruth is easy, but continuing and reinforcing a lie is far harder. The natural human tendency is to deploy another lie to bolster the initial mendacity. Deceptions—in the war room, boardroom, and bedroom—usually unravel because the deceiver lets down his guard and makes the simple mistake of telling, or revealing, the truth.

The defining feature of this spy would be his falsity. He was a pure figment of imagination, a weapon in war far removed from the traditional battle of bombs and bullets.

As the real army plowed through the waves toward Normandy, two more fake convoys were scientifically simulated heading for the Seine and Boulogne by dropping from planes a blizzard of tinfoil, code-named "Window," which would show up on German radar as two huge flotillas approaching the French coast.

Of all the strands in Operation Fortitude, none was quite so bizarre, so wholly unlikely, as the great pigeon double cross, the first and only avian deception scheme ever attempted.

He thought about how the camera makes one fall in love with an image of oneself, and perpetuates a false reality.

Because you rejected my love, this is my curse on you. Refusing to love an illusion, you will have to love without illusion.

He wasn't sure of his age himself; his parents manipulated their records to keep him out of military service.

So she called in. After first convincing several producers that she was, in fact, Soledad Ramirez, and had no intention of screaming "bababooey" live on air, they let

It's really amazing that in the age of unbelief, as a smart man called it, there isn't even more fraud. After all, with no God, there's no one to ever call you to account, and no accounting at all if you can get away with it.

You go around, tellin' lies, and now you wanna compromise Whatcha tryin' to do to my heart?

It's all so confusing this brutal abusing They blacken your eyes and then apologize Be daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thing Be a good little boy, and you'll get a new toy Tell grandma you fell from the swing

bisognerebbe mettere in croce, a trent'anni, ogni fanatico, perché colui che è stato un illuso, rinsavito, si converte in briccone

No world is rock real. As a certain poet in Dublin once said to me when, as a young journalist, I was emerging one enchanted evening, from a reception in a fashion-modelling agency, and had marvelled to him about the unreality, or it seemed to me to be, of the world in which those beautiful creations pirouetted. No world, the poet said sadly, is rock real.