State Secrets Quotes & Sayings

All the world talks, knowledge or information, takes you nowhere unless it's applied into life. It's only the experience, which allows you to see, beyond the present state. — Roshan Sharma

The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets. — W. H. Auden

If you're from New Jersey, let people make all those bad jokes about our state. Don't let anyone know how great it is here. It's the best kept secret. — Jon Bon Jovi

The first kiss ideally signals rapture, exchange of hearts, and imminent marriage. Otherwise it is a kiss that lies. All very crude and nonsensical, and yet it is the staple myth of hundreds of comics called 'Sweethearts,' 'Romantic Secrets' and so forth. The state induced by the kiss is actually self-induced, of course, for few lips are so gifted with electric and psychedelic possibilities. — Germaine Greer

We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas - things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy. — James Comey

I value my ability to keep state secrets. — Richard Armitage

I can't reveal the mystery to either saint or sinner; I can't state at length what I've said curtly; I achieve an altered state that I can't explain; I have a secret that I cannot share. — Omar Khayyam

Security is not a license for people in authority to hide the tactics they would never openly admit to using. — Jack Campbell

Our children should be taught to beware of everything foreign and not to disclose any state or party secrets to foreigners ... for foreigners are eyes for their countries, and some of them are counterrevolutionary instruments [in the hands of imperialism]. — Saddam Hussein

Finally, here at home, in one of her first decisions as Secretary of State, she set up a private e-mail server in her basement in violation of our national security. Let's face the facts: Hillary Clinton cared more about protecting her own secrets than she cared about protecting America's secrets. — Chris Christie

Who's in or out, who moves the grand machine, Nor stirs my curiosity, or spleen; Secrets of state no more I wish to know Than secret movements of a puppet-show; Let but the puppets move, I've my desire, Unseen the hand which guides the master wire. — Winston Churchill

We're becoming more of a police state, and the government is doing everything it can to protect its secrets. — Kenneth Eade

A game of chess holds many secrets. Fortunately! That is why we cannot clearly state whether chess is science, art, or a sport. — Garry Kasparov

Despite a campaign that was based on a very powerful promise of transparency, President Obama, and again in my view quite correctly, has used the state secrets argument in a variety of courts, as much as President Bush. — Michael Hayden

There is a limited elite that understands the secrets of their own techniques, but not necessarily of all techniques. These men are close to the seat of modern governmental power. The state is no longer founded on the 'average citizen', but on the ability and knowledge of this elite. The average man is altogether unable to penetrate technical secrets or governmental organization and consequently can exert no influence at all on the state. — Jacques Ellul

At the most basic level of protecting a writer's personal safety, democratic countries offer a further advantage. If you steal hundreds of thousands of documents from the Russian state and put them online, the FSB will try to kill you. Steal American secrets, and the CIA will not. — Nick Cohen

he spoke out forcefully against leakers, including former CIA agent Philip Agee, who had just released a tell-all book. My father could forgive a lot of mistakes, but he believed that it was disgraceful for a man to violate his oath and reveal state secrets, especially when it could lead to the loss of innocent American life. — George W. Bush

It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line. — Matt Taibbi

And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she belonged to neither; and indeed, for the time being she seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her. She was a feather blown on the gale. Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged ... . — Virginia Woolf

Angela Carter ... refused to join in rejecting or denouncing fairy tales, but instead embraced the whole stigmatized genre, its stock characters and well-known plots, and with wonderful verve and invention, perverse grace and wicked fun, soaked them in a new fiery liquor that brought them leaping back to life. From her childhood, through her English degree at the University of Bristol where she specialised in Medieval Literature, and her experiences as a young woman on the folk-music circuit in the West Country, Angela Carter was steeped in English and Celtic faerie, in romances of chivalry and the grail, Chaucerian storytelling and Spenserian allegory, and she was to become fairy tale's rescuer, the form's own knight errant, who seized hold of it in its moribund state and plunged it into the fontaine de jouvence itself.
(from "Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter") — Marina Warner

The secrets of alchemy exist to transform mortals from a state of suffering and ignorance to a state of enlightenment and bliss. — Deepak Chopra

Let's get drunk," I state, clinking my glass with his.
"Sure you want to do that?" Dorian says with a raised eyebrow. He gives me that look a lot, probably because of all my questionable behavior.
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," I say with a cynical chuckle. "But I know I'm tired of disappointment. And I'm tired of keeping secrets. And I'm tired of fucking things up!"
Dorian nods, understanding my frustration. "Do you want me to help you?" he asks quietly. I know what he means. Dorian is offering to fix me like he did the day before.
"No," I shake my head. "I want you to drink with me. Then I want you to do things to me that are as dirty and immoral as I already feel." I take another hefty gulp and let the searing burn strip away the guilt and shame in my chest.
"Ok, let's get drunk." And with that Dorian downs the entire contents of his glass and turns on the music. — S.L. Jennings

By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight ... Second: Circumspection ... Third: Caution ... And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources — Benjamin Franklin

Donald Trump accused Huma Abedin of sharing state secrets with her husband. I think Trump clearly lacks a sense of Huma. — Michael R. Burch

You cannot see clearly, because you are so full of expectations, hopes,desires. Your eyes are covered with many layers of dust: you need a deep cleansing of your eyes. That's what meditation is. Let the thoughts disappear, the hopes disappear, the desires disappear. Then you have a clarity, then your eyes are perfect mirrors. Only then, in that silent state of your vision, will you know the secrets of the beyond. — Rajneesh

It was natural that the direct wielders of the royal prerogative, men who sat in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, who knew the secrets of the State and the necessity for prompt action, should despise the merely declaratory character of a good deal of Common Law process. To them we doubtless owe those four great pillars of Chancery jurisdiction, the injunction, the decree, the sequestration, and the commission of rebellion. — Edward Jenks

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

Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state. They're a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it. — Don DeLillo

He, too, had dreamed dreams. Folk are usually content to draw from such visions portents which sometimes prove true, since they reveal the sleeper's secrets; but he surmised that these games the mind plays when left to itself can indicate to us chiefly the way in which the soul perceives things. Accordingly, he sought to enumerate the qualities of substance as seen in dream: lightness, impalpability, incoherence, total liberty with regard to time; then, the mobility of forms which allows each person in this state to be several people, and the several to reduce themselves to one; last, the sense of something akin to Platonic reminiscence, but also the almost insupportable feeling of necessity. Such phantom categories strongly resemble what Hermetists clam to know of existence beyond the grave, as if the world of death were only continuing for the soul the awesome world of night. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Instead of buying into that negative self-talk, state what you intend to invite into your life each day. Be as specific as possible. When I stated my intention of becoming a Best-Selling Author, I didn't know HOW I would do it. I just stated my intention and desire with certainty. Before I knew it, I started to manifest what I intended to attract and the "how" showed up. The right people at the right time came into my life. Within one year, my book, Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change, was sitting on the Best Sellers List. That's what happens when you state an intention. It sparks a series of events bringing your intention into reality. — Lisa A. Mininni

All right, shadow-priest, you've been spying - on what? What state secrets have you learned watching me groom these horses?'
'Only that they hate you, Daru. Every time your back was turned, they got ready to nip you - only you always seemed to step away at precisely the right moment-'
'Yes, I did, since I knew what they were intending. Each time.'
'Is this pride I hear? That you outwitted two horses? — Steven Erikson

The secrets of advanced meditation were shrouded in secrecy because of respect for, and even fear of, their innate power. Just as governments guard state secrets of power, the ancient yoga masters guarded these secrets of spiritual power. They believed that power has the capacity to corrupt, and that it would be disastrous for the wrong person to learn these secrets. — Cameron Stauth

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It's basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it's wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore. — Bill Gates

Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words - and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses words with which thoughts are produce. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows? — Clarice Lispector

What naive garbage. People don't want freedom anymore
even those to whom freedom is a kind of religion are afraid of it, like trembling acolytes who make sacrifices to some pagan god. People want their governments to keep secrets from them. They want the hand of law to be brutal. They are so terrified by their own power that they will vote to have it taken out of their hands. Look at America. Look at the sharia states. Freedom is a dead philosophy, Alif. The world is returning to its natural state, to the rule of the weak by the strong. Young as you are, it's you who are out of touch, not me. — G. Willow Wilson

Spending should be transparent. All spending by the Pentagon should be online. Every check. Exceptions should be made for legitimate national security issues. But military and civilian pay and retirement benefits are not state secrets. This has already been done in many state governments. — Grover Norquist

No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his
neighbour's heart. — Marcus Aurelius

I have some state secrets I will take with me to paradise. — Giulio Andreotti

The Congo Free State is unique in its kind. It has nothing to hide and no secrets and is not beholden to anyone except its founder. — Leopold II Of Belgium

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest. — Garry Wills

Fifth letter : To lead your best life, do your best work

There is no insignificant work in the world. All labor is a chance to express personal talents, to create our art and to realize the genius we are built to be. We must work like picasso painted : with devotion, passion, energy and excellence. In this way, our productivity will not only become a source of inspiration to others, but it will have an impact - making a difference in the lives around us. One of the greatest secrets to a life beautifully lived is to do work that matters. And to ascend to such a state of mastery in it that people can't take ther eyes off you. — Robin S. Sharma

Christine Gray wrote in her remarkable 1986 PhD dissertation, Thailand: The Soteriological State in the 1970s: Any study of contemporary Thai society must account for the U.S. influence on that polity and the mutual denial of that influence. Thailand's relationship with the United States is complex, heavily disguised and, in many instances, actively denied by the leaders of both countries... In many cases, it is difficult if not impossible to determine the extent of American influence in Thailand. Thailand is a nation of secrets: of secret bombings and air bases during the Vietnam War, of secret military pacts and aid agreements, of secret business transactions and secret ownership of businesses and joint venture corporations. This is precisely the point; the American presence has taken on powerful cosmological, religious and even mythic overtones. The American influence on the Thai economy and polity has become a symbol of uncertainty, of men's inability to know the truth. — Andrew MacGregor Marshall

Up by the fortress was this ... thinadeskite you mentioned?" Mulaghesh grimaces. So much for state secrets. "Yes. — Robert Jackson Bennett