Quotes About Secrecy

I'm sure, in real life, spying is boring - there's probably a lot of sitting around and plenty of paperwork. But the world seems to think that spying is exciting, and that's how movies get made.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

I used to try to pick locks because I grew up on my grandparents' farm and I started my own little spy club. I would go around the farm and try to break into the shed and try spying on my grandpa. It was ridiculous.

I was very keen on squash. My father used to go to sleep in the afternoon. Normally, in Pakistan, everybody goes to sleep in the afternoon, because it's really hot. I'd go and play without telling anybody.

We're going to break a story that there are people on the staff on the 9-11 Commission that didn't want the 9-11 Commissioners to know the details of Able Danger because of the potential to embarrass those commissioners.

On '24,' it says on the front page of your script: 'This script is for the production staff and cast. Please don't show it to anybody else.'

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening; the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage, and reveal all this stuff, and yet when I'm at home, I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage - they're just not stages you're allowed to see.

I keep my own personality in a cupboard under the stairs at home so that no one else can see it or nick it.

I personally couldn't care less who's in the stall next to me as long as I don't have to see what you're doing in there.

Stan and I funded the first phase of the work ourselves. It was secret.

When the Holocaust happened, I was 15 years old. My parents kept it a secret from me, despite belonging to the Red Cross. I only found out about it much later. Even today I still feel guilty, because I was an ignoramus between the age of 15 and 25. I am sorry I couldn't stand up for them.

The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We'll tell you, you don't have to drag it out of us.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

The Pentagon Papers case stands today as a barrier to silence by official edict.

I don't think anyone's private life stands up to public scrutiny.

The man creates a pseudonym and hides behind it like a worm

Three hundred men, each of whom knows all the other, govern the fate of the European continent, and they elect their successors from their entourage.

A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.

A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.

On Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: If a man cannot keep a measly affair secret, what is he doing in charge of the Intelligence Service?

The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

God preserve us! If men knew what is done in secret, no one would be free from the interference of others.

Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.