Secret Enemies Quotes & Sayings

Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. — William Lloyd Garrison

At the end of his life, Stalin was at the pinnacle of his power. His authority was unassailable and not under threat from any source. But he did not feel that way. Like other dictators, he never stopped fighting for power and never quite trusted his subjects. The methods he used in his never-ending battle for power were universal and simple. They included the elimination of any potential threat from within his inner circle, unrelenting oversight of the secret police, the encouragement of competition and mutual control among the various components of government, and the mobilization of society against perceived enemies both internal and external. — Oleg V. Khlevniuk

Taylor Swift is very strategic with her friends and enemies. And I know lots of secrets. I can't divulge, but I know a lot of stuff about her. And I'm scared. I'm scared for my life. — Diplo

I suspect if we were as familiar with our bones as with our skin, we'd never bury dead but shrine them in their rooms, arranged as we might like to find them on a visit; and our enemies, if we could steal their bodies from the battle sites, would be museumed as they died, the steel still eloquent in their sides, their metal hats askew, the protective toes of their shoes unworn, and friend and enemy would be so wondrously historical that in a hundred years we'd find the jaws still hung for the same speech and all the parts we spent our life with titled as they always were - rib cage, collar, skull - still repetitious, still defiant, angel light, still worthy of memorial and affection. After all, what does it mean to say that when our cat has bitten through the shell and put confusion in the pulp, the life goes out of them? Alas for us, I want to cry, our bones are secret, showing last, so we must love what perishes: the muscles and the waters and the fats. — William H Gass

The most important thing, are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that were in your head to more than living size when they are brought out. But, it's more than that isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure that your enemies would love to steal away. And you make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all or, why you thought that it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst I think. When a secret stays locked in not for want of teller but for want of understanding ear. — Stephen King

I pledge myself to the Rose Society until the end of my days, to use my eyes to see all that happens, my tongue to woo other to our side, my ears to hear every secret, my hands to crush my enemies. I will do everything in my power to destroy all who stand in my way. — Marie Lu

It was the scientist in me, you see. It was the desire to see all the everything beyond the Golden City. To escape the sycophants, the provincial. The hunger to know. It is my greatest weapon. But the mask conceals this. And a lie meant for my people ensnares everyone. Even my enemies. They think they have me-- a king reduced to chains. But I know a secret that I cannot yet tell. First I must put villainous means to proper ends... and let them feed my hunger to know. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

While the new Legionnaire man eliminated his enemies in the name of God, with a cross in his hand, the new Communist man eliminated God altogether and stood on His pedestal. They were both equally thirsty for blood. — Teodor Flonta

Perhaps Communists had wormed their way so deeply into our government on both the working and planning levels that they were able to exercise an inordinate degree of power in shaping the course of America in the dangerous postwar era. I could not help wondering and worrying whether we were faced with open enemies across the conference table and hidden enemies who sat with us in our most secret councils. — Mark W. Clark

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them
words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. — Stephen King

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

The night-soil men can see a bird walking in trees. It isn't a bird. It is a woman who has removed her skin and is on her way to drink the blood of her secret enemies. It is a woman who has left her skin i a corner of a house made out of wood. It is a woman who is reasonable and admires honeybees in the hibiscus. — Jamaica Kincaid

In most cases, cables are marked secret not because the U.S. requires it but because those speaking to us - the foreign leaders across the table - do. They are not keeping secrets from us, but from two other groups: their enemies and their subjects. — Elliott Abrams

Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces. — Richard Perle

A multiverse hurtling toward an inevitable heat death 100 trillion years in the future. An alien race of religious fanatics bent on absorbing all sentient life. Another alien race fighting back. A world of magicians living in secret. And himself, a contractor, a human Vorid that could absorb his enemies and grow stronger. All in less than 24 hours. And here he was, relaxing on his roof. Maybe video games really did desensitize you to this stuff. Except if he died, he wasn't going to pop back to life. — Andrew Ball

And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. — Adolf Hitler

A pledge," I say again. "To drive fear into those who will confront us."
Violetta hesitates - only for a moment. "To bind us together."
"I pledge myself to the Rose Society," I begin. "Until the end of my days." One by one, the others call out the same thing, murmurs at first that turn into firm words.
"To use my eyes to see all that happens," says Sergio.
"My tongue to woo others to our side," says Magiano, with his savage smile.
"My ears to hear every secret," Violetta continues.
"My hands," I finish. "To crush my enemies."
"I will do everything in my power to destroy all who stand in my way." Right now, what I want is the throne. Enzo's power. A perfect revenge. And all the Inquisitors, queens, and Daggers in the world won't be able to stop me. — Marie Lu

Smoking torches, lamps, and tapers Dimly light the boisterous fest; Among these many lying faces Here am I, alas, chained fast. Giggling fools, out of my sight! 5580 Untrustworthy, grinning lot! All my enemies tonight Hound me with their secret hate. There's a friend turned enemy, I can see through his pretense! Another means to murder me, Ha, found out, away he slinks. Oh how I long to take flight, Run away, here, there, wherever! Menaced on all sides, I halt 5590 Between uncertainty and terror. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What is the motive to the secret ballot? This, and only this: Like other confederates in crime, those who use it are not friends, but enemies; and they are afraid to be known, and to have their individual doings known, even to each other. — Lysander Spooner

You have a death ray so when your enemies invade your secret lair, you pull out it out and you can swing it back and forth in a swath of doom, obliterating all your enemies while laughing maniacally! — Dennis Liggio

For the love of all that is holy, just give me a straight-up, stand-up sword fight! I hate court intrigue and all the closet-hiding, eavesdropping, secret-liaisoning, lying, and manipulating, who's-watching-who-watching-who bastards that bow and scrape and simper as they slip arsenic into your claret. You can't tell your friends from your enemies from one day to the next. - Stephano De Guichen — Margaret Weis

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not. — Thomas Jefferson

He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, and — James Runcie

In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them. — Bertrand Russell

It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret ... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead ... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. — Will Durant

There is a legend that elephant dispose of their dead in secret burial grounds and that none of these has ever been discovered. In support of this, there is only the fact that the body of an elephant, unless he had been trapped or shot in his tracks, has rarely been found. What happens to the old and diseased?
Not only natives, but many white settlers, have supported for years the legend (if it is a legend) that elephant will carry their wounded and their sick hundreds of miles, if necessary, to keep them out of the hands of their enemies. And it is said that elephant never forget (206). — Beryl Markham

Who are our basic enemies? This is a secret, unknown even to these basic enemies. - Xaviar Skolcamp, Over-Centennial Fellow of the Institute, indulgently, in response to a journalist's too-searching question — Jack Vance

If speech always wins, even if it's an atomic secret that's going to be broadcast to our enemies, it's easy to make a decision. Speech always wins. But it doesn't ... Liberty doesn't always trump equality or equality always trump liberty. — David Souter

Battles against Rome have been lost and won before, but hope was never abandoned, since we were always here in reserve. We, the choicest flower of Britain's manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the most distant dwellers upon earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies; and what men know nothing about they always assume to be a valuable prize ...
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of 'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace ... — Tacitus

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, made a comment that sounds almost prophetic now: that the happy, primitive society (which, by the way, never existed) is lost for all those who have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, Popper warns, the more certainly we will reach the Inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticized gangsterism. But once the existential problems of the individual, who is good by nature, can be blamed on the "evil" society, nothing stands in the way of sheer imagination. The definition of the benevolent society free of all power is only a question of fantasy. — Paul Watzlawick

I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes. — Jack Kerouac

Atticus Finch's secret of living was so simple it was deeply complex: where most men had codes and tried to live up to them, Atticus lived his to the letter with no fuss, no fanfare, and no soul-searching. His private character was his public character. His code was simple New Testament ethic, its rewards were the respect and devotion of all who knew him. Even his enemies loved him, because Atticus never acknowledged that they were his enemies. He was never a rich man, but he was the richest man his children ever knew. His — Harper Lee

Our enemies leave our bodies for the crows and the wolves. Our friends bury us in secret graves. — George R R Martin

Your secret enemies are deadly because you never see them coming. — Matshona Dhliwayo

And for most of that time, wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies. — Philip Pullman

She put her hand on her chest. I have magic yet. If you will set the clock working again, then I must be still. I have read quite as many stories as you, September. More, no doubt. And I know a secret you do not: I am not the villain. I am no dark lord. I am the princess in this tale. I am the maiden, with her kingdom stolen away. And how may a princess remain safe and protected through centuries, no matter who may assail her? She sleeps. For a hundred years, for a thousand. Until her enemies have all perished and the sun rises over her perfect, innocent face once more. — Catherynne M Valente

The actual stronghold of a man is inaccessible, almost invisible, until friends and enemies turn traitor- and lead him there by a secret path — Friedrich Nietzsche

Things used to be, now they not
anything but us is who we are
disguising ourselves as secret lovers
we've become public enemies
we walk away like strangers in the street
gone for eternity
we erased one another
so far from where we came
with so much of everything, how do we leave with nothing
lack of visual empathy equates the meaning of L-O-V-E
hatred and attitude tear us entirely — Chloe Mitchell

By intensity of hatred, nations create in themselves the character that they imagine in their enemies. Hence it comes that all passionate conflicts result in an interchange of characteristics. We might say with truth, those who hate open a door by which their enemies enter and make their own the secret places of the heart. — George William Russell

Man is very well defended against himself ... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love. For the good of mankind, and for the honor and glory of God. — Bram Stoker

The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. — Robert Conquest

What are friends ? Friends are people that you think are your friends
But they really your enemies, with secret indentities
And disguises, to hide they true colors
So just when you think you close enough to be brothers
They wanna come back and cut your throat when you ain't lookin' ... — Eminem

It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in an armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos.
"Give me your left eye," said the king of the trolls, "and I'll tell you."
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. "Now tell me."
The troll said, "The secret is, Watch with both eyes! — John Gardner

They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting. — N. Scott Momaday