Quotes About Anonymity

I can walk down the street, and 85 percent of the people on the block are really quite oblivious to me. They either think I'm probably an actor or else I installed their storm windows two years ago, or I work at their bank, or maybe I'm their cousin Marie's gynecologist. Then, to the other 15 percent of those people on the street, I'm a rock star.

When I was writing my column, I would almost always be recognized when I was in a restaurant, even if I was reviewing it and had booked under a fake name, so free stuff would start coming out of the kitchen on a conveyer belt, fantastic wines would be opened at my table. Now I can't even get a reservation on the pizza joint on the corner.

We are drama junkies, living half lives on social media, where we grandstand in a way only cowards do, anonymity gives us wings and if we are not trolling someone or being trolled by someone, the day just isn't a productive one.

Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who name-call and taunt with the fake bravery of the anonymous. But sometimes - thank goodness - it's nicer than real life.

The problem with losing your anonymity is that you can never go back.

Kafka was a master at the gruesome task of picturing people who do not use their potentialities and therefore lose their sense of being persons. The chief character in The Trial and in The Castle has no name—he is identified only by an initial, a mute symbol of one's lack of identity in one's own right.

Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source.

When we don't feel connected to a place, it becomes anonymous, and that anonymity is what allows us to be so destructive: we believe we don't have to care about something we know nothing about. We depersonalize the land and then simply take what we want from it, thinking there won't be any consequences. But when we do this, we're actually destroying our own life-support system.

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

I mean to retire, where nobody will have heard about my special skills. And conversation is mainly about the weather.

A long time ago, said Michael, I decided never to fall in love again. I have made of desire an anonymous activity. But not to feel...not to love...is like dying within life, Michael.

I find these nobodies so much more interesting than the celebrated people. Why is that?

While basking in the limelight, one sacrificed privacy. Anonymity has distinct advantages. Keeping to the background afforded one much more maneuverability and, thereby, power.

That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.

I'm really interested in the idea of anomynity and familiarity. And sunglasses, you know, are so indicatitve of that. I mean, they're worn by some people to hide themselves. But they're also a fashion statement, meant to be noticed. So there's a dichotomy there.

You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

Ask whomever you will but you'll never find out where I'm lodging

For our part, we labor on in the blind hope that we will somehow be plucked from anonymity and elevated to full-time status, where you work about nine months out of the year. So

I live a pretty anonymous life.

Secret Services are everywhere. They are part of out daily life. We just don't really care. We are not concerned at all.

I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship, is recorded.

Using pseudo names for privacy, and protection is not an offence, but if that causes any damage, to others is absolutely a crime.

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing—court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie.