In a world where transparency often reigns supreme, there's an enigmatic power nestled within the folds of secrecy. Whether it's the allure of the unknown or the strategic withholding of information, secrets have a profound impact on our lives, influencing our relationships, decisions, and even our perceptions of reality. This curated collection of 35 quotes delves into the fascinating paradox of secrecy—a force that can protect and empower yet simultaneously divide and deceive. Join us as we explore the wisdom of thinkers, writers, and leaders who have pondered the intricate dance of concealment and revelation. Through these insights, discover the compelling nature of secrets and their profound impact on the human experience.
1. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]” - John F. Kennedy
2. “A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” - Diane Arbus
3. “You should not honor men more than truth.” - Plato
4. “It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.” - Abraham Lincoln
5. “I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.” - Daniel Schorr
6. “I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.” - Oscar Wilde
7. “Privacy seems not an illusion for those who want to believe in secrecy principle.” - Toba Beta
8. “Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.” - Charles Fort
9. “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.” - Joseph Pulitzer
10. “But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats.For they would surely kill us.” - Glenway Wescott
11. “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
12. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” - William O. Douglas
13. “Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.” - Dahlia Lithwick
14. “There's a lot of good things about England, but I don't want to tell you too many of them.” - Michael Clarke
15. “What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?” - Christopher Hitchens
16. “If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.” - David Nicholls
17. “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
18. “That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.” - Patrick Rothfuss
19. “Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.” - Susan Sontag
20. “No secrecy, no business.” - Toba Beta
21. “Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.” - Criss Jami
22. “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
23. “It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.” - Criss Jami
24. “Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.” - Criss Jami
25. “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
26. “The critic of the Adepts would form a truer opinion of their attitude if he did not look upon them as guardians of a treasure, grudgingly doling it out to applicants whose rights it was impossible to ignore or defy, but rather as trainers of racehorses, patiently trying beast after beast in the hope that one may ultimately be found that will win the Grand National. The Adept who accepts an unsuitable pupil is guilty of cruelty just as much as the rider who sends a horse at a fence it cannot take.” - Dion Fortune
27. “Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!” - Charles Dickens
28. “Women are better at keeping secrets, but men are more comfortable with them” - Stephen King
29. “From out of nowhere, Phury felt an overwhelming tide of guilt, like someone had popped the lid off allhis deepest concerns and his fears for the future of the race. He had to respond to it, couldn't bear thepressure. Riding the wave, he found himself saying in a rush, "We live and die for our kind. The species is our firstand only concern. We fight every night and count the jars of thelessers we kill. Stealth is the way weprotect the civilians. The less they know about us, the safer they are. That is why we disappeared.” - J.R. Ward
30. “All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.” - Katharine Fullerton Gerould
31. “Privacy - like eating and breathing - is one of life's basic requirements.” - Katherine Neville
32. “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
33. “I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas-- a community, a culture of vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them-- like the Bermunda Triangle.” - Eve Ensler
34. “An execution carried out in secrecy is no better than lynching from a dry branch.” - Loren D. Estleman
35. “And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell...You know you love me.XOXO,Gossip Girl” - Cecily von Ziegesar
