Quotes about secrets
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Neil Halstead photo

“Every
Secret's a blinking light”

Neil Halstead (1970) British musician

Star Roving, ' (2017).

Walt Whitman photo

“Now obey thy cherished secret wish,
Embrace thy friends—leave all in order;
To port and hawser's tie no more returning,
Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Now Finalè to the Shore (To Tennyson)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ayumi Hamasaki photo
Philip Sidney photo

“Open suspecting others comes of secret condemning themselves.”

Book 1, page 144.
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1580)

Sara Teasdale photo

“But you I never understood,
Your spirit's secret hides like gold
Sunk in a Spanish galleon
Ages ago in waters cold.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Understanding"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Glenn Greenwald photo
Keshub Chunder Sen photo
George W. Bush photo
William Saroyan photo

“One nickel, one secret. No exchanges, no refunds.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) photo

“Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it?”

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) (1694–1746) Irish philosopher

An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise II: An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, Sect. I

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Understanding Our Mind (2006) Parallax Press ISBN 978-81-7223-796-7

Thomas Guthrie photo
Nicholas of Cusa photo
Margaret Mead photo

“… Her aunt is an agnostic, an ardent advocate of women's rights, an internationalist who rests all her hopes on Esperanto, is devoted to Bernard Shaw, and spends her spare time in campaigns of anti-vivisection. Her elder brother, whom she admires exceedingly, has just spent two years at Oxford. He is an Anglo-Catholic, an enthusiast concerning all things medieval, writes mystical poetry, reads Chesterton, and means to devote his life to seeking for the lost secret of medieval stained glass. Her mother's younger brother is an engineer, a strict materialist, who never recovered from reading Haeckel in his youth; he scorns art, believes that science will save the world, scoffs at everything that was said and thought before the nineteenth century, and ruins his health by experiments in the scientific elimination of sleep. Her mother is of a quietistic frame of mind, very much interested in Indian philosophy, a pacifist, a strict non-participator in life, who in spite of her daughter's devotion to her will not make any move to enlist her enthusiasms. And this may be within the girl's own household. Add to it the groups represented, defended, advocated by her friends, her teachers, and the books which she reads by accident, and the list of possible enthusiasms, of suggested allegiances, incompatible with one another, becomes appalling.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 161

Clifford D. Simak photo
H. G. Wells photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Stephen R. Donaldson photo

“The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling”

Stephen R. Donaldson (1947) Novelist

Foamfollower in Lord Foul's Bane, quoting the Elohim

Diane Ackerman photo
William Saroyan photo

“I had three secrets and sold them all.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Neil Peart photo

“The secret to life is, you get up in the morning, and you go to work.”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

From the book Travelling Music
Other

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Let me add,” he went on, “that since I handle secret and most-secret despatches, I know things that I don’t know, if I make my meaning clear.”

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXIX : “—we place no faith in princes.”, p. 286

George E. P. Box photo
Heidi Klum photo
Wisława Szymborska photo

“Secret codes resound.
Doubts and intentions come to light.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

Gloria Estefan photo

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Daniel Handler photo
Arshile Gorky photo

“.. it was the Cubist painters who created the new magic of space and color that everywhere today confronts our eyes in new architecture and design. Since then the various branches of modern art through exhaustive experiment and research have created a vast laboratory whose discoveries unveiled for all the secrets of form, line and color..”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Quote from Gorky's text: 'Camouflage', 1942; an announcement for a teaching program [set up by Gorky and the director of the Grand Central School of Art, Edmund Greasen]
1942 - 1948

Dave Matthews photo
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo

“The plaintiff cannot dive into the secret recesses of his (the defendant's) heart.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

In Re Ward (1862), 31 Beav. 7.

“Taylor's Law states: "The Foreign Office knows no secrets."”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

English History 1914 – 1945 ([1965] 1975), "Revised Bibliography", p. 730

Anthony Burgess photo
Brewster Kahle photo

“Here’s the problem with the web — this is so cool, it’s worth it. The internet is decentralized in the sense that you can kind of nuke any part of it and it still works. That was its original design. The World Wide Web isn’t that way. You go and knock out any particular piece of hardware, it goes away. Can we make a reliable web that’s served from many different places, kind of like how the Amazon cloud works, but for everybody? The answer is yes, you can. You can make kind of a pure to pure distribution structure, such that the web becomes reliable. Another is that we can make it private so that there’s reader privacy. Edward Snowden has brought to light some really difficult architectural problems of the current World Wide Web. The GCHQ, the secret service of the British, watched everybody using WikiLeaks, and then offered all of those IP addresses, which are personally identifiable in the large part, to the NSA. The NSA had conversations about using that as a means to go and… monitor people at an enhanced level that those are now suspects. Libraries have long had history with people being rounded up for what they’ve read and bad things happening to them. We have an interest in trying to make it so that there’s reader privacy”

Brewster Kahle (1960) American computer engineer, founder of the Internet Archive

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle on Recode Decode https://www.recode.net/2017/3/8/14843408/transcript-internet-archive-founder-brewster-kahle-wayback-machine-recode-decode (March 8, 2017)

Derryn Hinch photo
André Maurois photo
George Borrow photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Anthony Bourdain photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as “the journey homeward to habitual self.” You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

Homér photo

“We two have secret signs,
known to us both but hidden from the world.”

XXIII. 109–110 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Eliphas Levi photo
Tori Amos photo

“I found the secret to life; I'm okay when everything is not okay”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Upside Down".
Songs

Ben Bradley (politician) photo

“Corbyn sold British secrets to communist spies.”

Ben Bradley (politician) (1989) British politician

Tory MP deletes tweet accusing Jeremy Corbyn of 'selling British secrets to Communist spies
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/24/ben-bradley-apologises-unreservedly-for-corbyn-spy-claims

Orson Scott Card photo
Michel Seuphor photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“To go against the grain is the secret of bravery.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity
From the poems written in English

Henry David Thoreau photo
Jean-Claude Juncker photo

“Monetary policy is a serious issue. We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup […] I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious […] I am for secret, dark debates.”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

Jean-Claude Juncker, 20 April 2011, quoted in " Eurogroup chief: 'I'm for secret, dark debates' http://euobserver.com/9/32222", EUobserver, 21 April 2011. Retrieved 19 May 2011.
2011

Glen Cook photo
D. V. Gundappa photo

“Seeking Brahman in world transactions,
Seeking Brahman in all JIva forms,
Feeling Brahman in body and sense experiences,
This is the secret of salvation – Mankuthimma.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

A Kagga {Quatrian) of Manku Thimmana Kagga in pages=191-92
The Wisdom Of Vasistha A Study On Laghu Yoga Vasistha From A Seeker`S Point Of View

Pendleton Ward photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Roger Bacon photo

“Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.”

Roger Bacon (1220–1292) medieval philosopher and theologian

Cited by Peter Nicholls (1979) The Encyclopedia of science fiction: an illustrated A to Z. p. 376

Kurt Schwitters photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“How can we expect others to keep our secrets if we cannot keep them ourselves?”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre puisse garder notre secret, si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-mêmes?
Maxim 64 of the Maximes supprimées.
Later Additions to the Maxims

Thomas Carlyle photo

“He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Pt. II, Bk. I, ch. 7.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

Thomas Hobbes photo
Francis Bacon photo

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

James Anthony Froude photo
Eliphas Levi photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Adam Smith photo

“All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II, p. 935.

Confucius photo

“There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Nick Herbert photo

“One of the best-kept secrets of science is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 2, Physicists Losing Their Grip, p. 15

Joseph Addison photo

“The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

" The Life and Teachings of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus http://magdelene.net/Thoth%20Hermes%20Trismegistus.htm", in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) by the Canadian occultist Manly Hall; a few quotation websites credit this to Addison.
Misattributed

Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo

“So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
I with my secret self held communing of mine own.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Easter Day II http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/easterdayii.html, l. 1-2 (1849).

John Wallis photo
David Berg photo
David Cameron photo
Gore Vidal photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“That's the secret. 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walk down a street.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Mrs. Bathurst http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/TrafficsDiscoveries/bathurst.html (1904).
Other works

“Almost every study of the secret of the successful leader has agreed that the possession of a generous and unusual endowment of physical and nervous energy is essential to personal ascendancy. Those who rise in any marked way above the mass of men have conspicuously more drive, more sheer endurance, greater vigor of body and mind than the average person”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 83; As cited in: Preston J. Beil (1956) Variety store retailing: A text and basic reference book for the multi-billion dollar variety store and popular-priced general merchandise market. p. 90.

“Finally we should note the basic assumption of the classical laboratory-namely, that nature is neither capricious nor secretive. If nature were capricious, she would tell one observer one thing and another observer a quite different thing… Also nature is not secretive, in the sense that she will not forever hide certain aspects of her being…”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 57; as cited in: Carolyn Merchant (1982) "Isis' Consciousness Raised", in: Isis, Vol. 73, No. 3. (1982), pp. 398-409

Orson Scott Card photo

“I have no secret thoughts… Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them — if they're unknown, it's because no one asked.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Heinrich Himmler photo

“I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination  of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The Posen speech to SS officers (4 October 1943), original translation from "International Military Trials - Nurnberg Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV", US Govt Printing Offc 1946 pp. 563-4.

Richard Stallman photo
Kuruvilla Pandikattu photo

“The secret of joy is: To know the world and its evil powers … and still preserve the hope.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Joy: Share it! p.54.
Joy: Share it! (2017)

Mahatma Gandhi photo
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“Madame de Staël thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all."”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Sketch of the Life, Character, and Writings of Baroness de Staël-Holstein (1820) by Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure, p. 349; often misquoted as, "I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer."

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo
Naomi Klein photo
Leon R. Kass photo
Machado de Assis photo

“Besides, I like epitaphs. Among civilized people they're an expression of that pious and secret selfishness that induces us to pull out of death a shred at least of the shade that has passed on.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Gosto dos epitáfios; eles são, entre a gente civilizada, uma expressão daquele pio e secreto egoísmo que induz o homem a arrancar à morte um farrapo ao menos da sombra que passou.
Source: As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), Ch. 151, p. 196.

Akio Morita photo

“There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 130.