Top 60 Secrecy Quotes

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

So far as I know, there were no pains taken to preserve secrecy on this subject; that is, I saw no attempt made to keep any of the inmates of the Convent in ignorance of the murder of children.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

While the intelligence profession oftentimes demands secrecy, it is critically important that there be a full and open discourse on intelligence matters with the appropriate elected representatives of the American people.

I’ve been on a team that won the world championship of barbecue. But barbecue’s interesting, because it’s one of these cult foods like chili, or bouillabaisse. Various parts of the world will have a cult food that people get enormously attached to – there’s tremendous traditions; there’s secrecy.

Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public’s interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle.

Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak.

There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States, but around the world.

Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

If secrecy is made out of the same stuff that the rest of the world is made out of, then it’s fundamentally visible, which means that secrecy can only fail in the first instance, in the sense that you cannot make something disappear.

Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.

Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.

Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy.

Let me get something straight: I have no problem with ghostwriting as a thing unto itself. What bothers me is the way it’s shrouded in secrecy, ignored to the point of straight-up lying. Why not be honest?

Life within the Kremlin was shrouded in impenetrable secrecy.

I’m not necessarily opposed to greater American involvement. But if that’s the way the Mexican government wants to go, it needs to come clean about it. Just look at what we learned from Iraq. Secrecy led to malfeasance. It led to corrupt contracting.

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Men and women understand different things about personal boundaries. What men call privacy, women know as secrecy.

Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

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.

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.

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public’s need for transparency and the government’s need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

The Nauru files lifts the secrecy surrounding Australia’s hidden detention regime for asylum seekers through vivid reporting and the words of the guards and officials on the island themselves.

What do we know about the diseases carried by illegal aliens? Not much, thanks to government secrecy, but we know enough to be worried.

The sinner will not confess, nor will the priest receive his confession, if the veil of secrecy is removed.

The government’s instinct is to shroud itself in secrecy – to act like the office of a president instead of as a collective cabinet government held to account by the elected House of Commons.

Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.

I think extreme secrecy is a bad sign in all startups. Very few startups die because they tell you exactly how their technology works. On the long list of startup killers, that’s pretty far down. Though on the list of entrepreneur fears, it’s pretty high.

In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security.

The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.

As a matter of historical analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated in an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets.

The ‘Bourne’ movies are great in their own ways; it introduces a whole other sort of allegory about the Bush years. The secrecy and the threats of a big global organization.

Oftentimes, secrecy involves creating spaces that are outside of the law but are outside the normal channels of oversight. And I think it’s pretty easy to see that if you create spaces that are essentially outside the law, then you’re creating spaces where anything can happen.

My parents wouldn’t let me listen to ‘American Idiot.’ So it felt very rebellious to go over to my friend’s house after school and listen to it in secrecy.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

We don’t need secrecy.

For men, privacy means not being told stuff that would hurt. For women, secrecy is having stuff go on behind your back.

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

For gay people, we learned about our lives in secrecy and a lot of fear.

In the traditional academic literature, secrecy is thought of as a set of bureaucratic operations – hiding files and hiding information, that sort of thing.

Oh, well, there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy.

Changing much-cherished bank secrecy laws is worth the effort. Corruption, tax evasion, and the capture of natural resource revenues undermine the rule of law, weaken the social fabric, erode citizens’ trust in institutions, fuel conflict and insecurity, and hamper job creation.

The higher the classification of secrecy, the quicker you will report it.

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.

Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it’s also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.

I guess you could say I’m a closeted animal person, because a lot of my life I did it in secrecy. I was always fascinated with exotic animals, particularly reptiles, from the age of 6 when I got a pet tortoise.

Although some secrecy is odious, some is essential just to preserve our sense of self.

Secrecy can be sexy. It’s essential to any good mystery novel.

While trade agreements are negotiated in secrecy, behind-closed doors, we have learned enough from leaks to know that the result of passing TPA to ‘fast track’ these trade agreements would affect everything from food safety to environmental protection to consumer financial protections.

Secrecy is the underlying mistake that makes every innovation go wrong in Michael Crichton novels and films! If AI happens in the open, then errors and flaws may be discovered in time… perhaps by other, wary AIs!

In many competitive worlds like luxury, things are done behind closed doors and with secrecy, so one day I had a eureka moment: for one weekend we show everything, full transparency, forget about business or commerce and showcase our work.