Secret Secrecy Quotes & Sayings

Everyone accepts that there are inevitably little areas of secrecy reserved for specialists; as regards things in general, many believe they are in on the secret. — Guy Debord

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honour by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance. — Samuel Johnson

To whom you betray your secret you sell your liberty. — Benjamin Franklin

There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart. — Victor Hugo

Hence it is truly said of heaven 'in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.'4 But it is also said 'To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.'5 What can be more a man's own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? — C.S. Lewis

The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret. — Gregory Maguire

The bomb was 'born secret,' as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said. The atomic bomb marked a powerful turning point in America's stewardship of national security affairs. After its arrival, Garry Willis argues, 'the power of secrecy that enveloped the Bomb became a model for the planning or execution of Anything Important, as guarded by Important People.' But the first stop was a radical restructuring of the government itself, to account for the development and expansion of a nuclear arsenal requiring special means, staffs, oversight, and a stringent and novel regime of peacetime secrecy. The national security state was born. — Scott Horton

Speak of things public to the public, but of things lofty and secret only to the loftiest and most private of your friends. Hay to the ox and sugar to the parrot. — Johannes Trithemius

At that time we were very definitely told that under no circumstances should there be any secret chapters or any other secrecy in the life of the Party, but that everything should be done publicly. — Fritz Sauckel

What is mine, even to my life, is hers I love; but the secret of my friend is not mine! — Philip Sidney

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular. — Jill Lepore

No, that's not the style of these people,' explained Maxy. 'You shouldn't think of these Bolsheviks as modern politicians. They were religious fanatics. Their Marxism was fanatical; their fervour was semi-Islamic; and they saw themselves as members of a secret military-religious order like the medieval Crusaders or the Knights Templar. They were ruthless, amoral and paranoid. They believed that millions would have to die to create their perfect world. Family, love and friendship were nothing compared to the holy grail. People died of gossip at Stalin's court. For a man like Satinov, secrecy was everything. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

My father was quite conscious of that distinction, too, and because he spoke very freely in private, he used to sometimes say, quite fiercely, "Now that's secret!" And then if I or somebody else looked hurt because they thought, "Well, of course I'm not going to leave the table and pick up the telephone and ring the papers." If Papa saw that we were wounded, he would say, "It isn't that I don't trust you, but I'm labeling it, I'm labeling it." That phrase passed into family history. "I'm labeling it!" Papa would say, quite merrily sometimes. — Mary Soames

And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell ... You know you love me.
XOXO,
Gossip Girl — Cecily Von Ziegesar

Defenseless peasant societies in Laos and Cambodia were savagely bombed in "secret" - the "secrecy" resulting from the refusal of the mass media to make public facts for which they had ample evidence. — Noam Chomsky

How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret? — Jacques Derrida

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust. — Bell Hooks

The only way to keep a secret is to never have one. — Julian Assange

We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love. — Jean De La Bruyere

It is safer to be silent than to reveal one's secret to any one, and telling him not to mention it. — Saadi

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light. — Henry David Thoreau

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. — Carl Sagan

It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method. — Hilaire Belloc

The rules that I shall propose concerning secrecy, and from which I think it not safe to deviate without long and exact deliberation, are, never to solicit the knowledge of a secret,
not willingly, nor without many limitations, to accept such confidence when it is offered; when a secret is once admitted, to consider the trust as of a very high nature, important as society and sacred as truth, and therefore not to be violated for any incidental convenience, or slight appearance of contrary fitness. — Samuel Johnson

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen. — Wilkie Collins

The beauty with modest smile, whose secrecy of silent love had just been stolen, beamed at this wonderful offer and she replenished herself with his love as a carefree child cossetted with luxurious warmth after a cold shower. — Ashmita Acharya

In love we are not only liable to betray ourselves, but also the secrets of others. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret. — Daniel Schorr

It's the secrecy surrounding drone strikes that's most troubling. . . We don't know the targeting criteria, or whether the rules for CIA and military drone strikes differ; we don't know the details of the internal process through which targets are vetted; we don't know the chain of command, or the details of congressional oversight. The United States does not release the names of those killed, or the location or number of strikes, making it impossible to know whether those killed were legitimately viewed as combatants or not. We also don't know the cost of the secret war: How much money has been spent on drone strikes? What's the budget for the related targeting and intelligence infrastructures? How is the government assessing the costs and benefits of counterterrorism drone strikes? That's a lot of secrecy for a targeted killing program that has reportedly caused the deaths of several thousand people. (117-118) — Rosa Brooks

Government ought to be all outside and no inside ... Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety. — Woodrow Wilson

The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish. The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp. — James Baldwin

Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves. — Nicolas Chamfort

The United States builds weapons presumably secretly, and then it sells them to other countries. So the whole business of secrecy is kind of a fake issue because hardly anything technological remains a secret for very long. — Howard Zinn

It's simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets. — Whitfield Diffie

The secret known to two is no longer a secret. — Ninon De L'Enclos

What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'? — Christopher Hitchens

The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock. — Chris Hedges

A person who tells a secret, swearing the recipient to secrecy in turn, is asking of the other person a discretion which he is abrogating himself. — Dorothy L. Sayers

... secrecy adds a charm to an amour ... — Frederick Marryat

But I've always been a genius of secrecy, I thought, quite unlike Wertheimer who basically couldn't keep anything a secret, had to talk about everything, had to get everything out in the open as long as he lived. But naturally unlike most others we were lucky not to have to earn a cent because we had enough from the very beginning. Whereas — Thomas Bernhard

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all. — Sophocles

Confidentiality refers to the boundaries surrounding shared secrets and to the process of guarding these boundaries. While confidentiality protects much that is not in fact secret, personal secrets lie at its core. The innermost, the vulnerable, often the shameful: these aspects of self-disclosure help explain why one name for professional confidentiality has been "the professional secret." Such secrecy is sometimes mistakenly confused with privacy; yet it can concern many matters in no way private, but that someone wishes to keep from the knowledge of third parties. — Sissela Bok

He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Truly, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith stands adultery.
Whoever extols him as a God of love, does not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loves irrespective of reward and requital.
When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites.
At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother. [...] and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not. — E. M. Forster

She raised her head when she heard my step, and her gaze met my own, over the matron's dipping shoulder, and her eyes grew bright. I knew then how hard it had been to keep, not just from Millbank but from her. I felt that little quickening. It was just as I imagine a woman must feel, when the baby within her gives its first kick.
Does it matter if I feel that, that is so small, and silent, and secret? — Sarah Waters

They are afraid. They would, today, keep secret a thousand things that, yesterday, they would have told one another freely. Freedom. Where is it now? We are driving it into limbo - their kind. To limbo. — Philip Wylie

Those without the gate frequently question the wisdom and right of the occultist to guard his knowledge by the imposition of oaths of secrecy. We are so accustomed to see the scientist give his beneficent discoveries freely to all mankind that we feel that humanity is wronged and defrauded if any knowledge be kept secret by its discoverers and not at once made available for all who desire to share in it.
The knowledge is reserved in order that humanity may be protected from its abuse at the hands of the unscrupulous. — Dion Fortune

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place — David Nicholls

A secret that has been buried too long, eating a hole in me, worms its way to the surface, like a swimmer who can't hold his breath any longer. — Michael R. French

The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned & promising a favourable issue. — George Washington

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, MY HEART!
For heaven's sake, my heart, keep secret your love, and hide the secret from those you see and you will have better fortune.
He who reveals secrets is considered a fool; silence and secrecy are much better for him who falls in love.
For heaven's sake, my heart, if someone asks, "What has happened?", do not answer.
If you are asked, "Who is she?";
Say she is in love with another
And pretend that it is of no consequence.
For heaven's sake, my love, conceal your passion; your sickness is also your medicine because love to the soul is as wine in a glass - what you see is liquid, what is hidden is its spirit.
For heaven's sake, my heart, conceal your troubles; then, should the seas roar and the skies fall, you will be safe. — Kahlil Gibran

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. — Glenn Greenwald

That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink. — Patrick Rothfuss

As long as they don't know, I am safe — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Secrecy breeds incompetence because where there is failure, failure is kept secret. — Julian Assange

A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know. — Diane Arbus

Sexual abuse is also a secret crime, one that usually has no witness. Shame and secrecy keep a child from talking to siblings about the abuse, even if all the children in a family are being sexually assaulted. In contrast, if a child is physically or emotionally abused, the abuse is likely to occur in front of the other children in the family, at least some of the time. The physical and emotional abuse becomes part of the family's explicit history. Sexual abuse does not. — Renee Fredrickson

Secret enmities are more to be feared than open ones. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret. — Oscar Wilde

The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret. — D.H. Lawrence

For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means — Gordon Cooper

When you are entrusted with a secret, you become irrevocably accountable for what you do or don't do after your mind is colored by the knowledge of it. — Joyce Rachelle

All Cabinet Ministers and other senior ministers are still sworn in as Privy Counsellors for life. The oath (which dates back to the thirteenth-century and has been described as Britain's oldest secrecy provision) commits them to keep all advice to the monarch secret. — Clive Ponting

Lest others should attempt the ascent of this terrible climb and perish, they swore themselves to secrecy (telling only enough people to ensure the perpetuation of their epic) and went off to try Everest instead. — Whipplesnaith

Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy. — Donna Tartt

In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy. — Robert K. Massie

All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He who trusts a secret to his servant makes his own man his master. — John Dryden

The difficulty is the levels of secrecy we had to maintain around the project at all different times. We had to keep it a secret while making it so we could move under the radar so we could get the stories. Before it came out we had to keep it on lock down to protect the safety and security of some people who appear in the film. — Amy Ziering

When you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damned secret, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix. — Harry S. Truman

True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lenghtily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is certainly of great importance for a general to keep his plans secret; and Frederick the Great was right when he said that if his night-cap knew what was in his head he would throw it into the fire. That kind of secrecy was practicable in Frederick's time when his whole army was kept closely about him; but when maneuvers of the vastness of Napoleon's are executed, and war is waged as in our day, what concert of action can be expected from generals who are utterly ignorant of what is going on around them? — Antoine-Henri Jomini

The secrecy of Masonry is an honorable secrecy; any good man may ask for her secrets; those who are worthy will receive them. To give them to those who do not seek, or who are not worthy, would but impoverish the Fraternity and enrich not those who received them. — William Howard Taft

the U.S. government has a long history of overclassifying information that shouldn't be classified at all - and keeping information classified until long after any justification for classifying it has disappeared. — Rosa Brooks

There is a very intense culture of secrecy in Britain that hasn't yet been dismantled. What passes for transparency here would serve any secret society well. — Heather Brooke

People equate patents with secrecy, that secrecy is what patents were designed to overcome. That's why the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented. They kept it as a trade secret, and they've outlasted patent laws by 80 years or more. — Craig Venter

The Air Force had put out a secret order for its pilots to capture UFOs. For the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee for investigating official secrecy concerning proof that UFOs are real machines under intelligent. — Donald Keyhoe

As is true in many families where children create enormously upsetting diversions from core family secrets, Elana's family fixed on her behavior as further proof that the secret should remain buried. When behavior is truly a distraction for the unspeakable, therapist after therapist may be brought in, each attempting to intervene at the wrong level, mistakenly addressing such signals at the biological, behavioral, intrapsychic, or interpersonal level, while completely missing the unimaginable maze of secrecy in which such actions are embedded. — Evan Imber-Black

To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly. — Samuel Johnson

Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception. — John Le Carre

Perhaps most unsettling, Quigley reveals that real power operates behind the scenes, in secrecy, and with little to fear from so-called democratic elections. He proves that conspiracies, secret societies, and small, powerful networks of individuals are not only real; they're extremely effective at creating or destroying entire nations and shaping the world as a whole. We learn that "representative government" is, at best, a carefully managed con game. — Joseph Plummer

Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers. — Laurie Matthew

One day I'm a normal person with a normal life," he said. "The next I'm standing on a street corner in Madrid with a secret phone and a hole in my arm and I'm bleeding all over, hoping I don't get arrested. It was completely crazy. But it seemed like the only way at the time. — Tyler Hamilton

All friends have secrets. We're like three-dimensional shapes on paper; we all have hidden sides. And there's some secrets we don't even reveal to ourselves. — Nenia Campbell

It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't. — Abraham Lincoln

For the Order wishes to be secret and to work in silence; for thus it is better secured from the oppression of the ruling powers, and because this secrecy gives a greater zest to the whole. — Adam Weishaupt