Informers Quotes

• On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

  Whittaker Chambers

  Night, Feelings, Pleasure

  Whittaker Chambers (2014). “Witness”, p.456, Regnery Publishing

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

• To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.

  Albert Maltz

  Gestapo, Victim, Torture

  84 Copy quote

• A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Men, Soldier

  76 Copy quote

• Anger is always concerned with individuals, ... whereas hatred is directed also against classes: we all hate any thief and any informer. Moreover, anger can be cured by time; but hatred cannot. The one aims at giving pain to its object, the other at doing him harm; the angry man wants his victim to feel; the hater does not mind whether they feel or not.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Hate, Anger

  Aristotle (1924). “The Works of Aristotle”

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Memories, Divine Justice, Paper

  "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Against Cowardliness". Book by Soren Kierkegaard, p. 351,

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers.

  William S. Burroughs

  Old Fashioned, Persons

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs”, p.35, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Guy, Matter, Player Piano

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.310, Dial Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Little men are dissolved in it. If there is any gold, truth makes it shine more brightly. . . .Truth, even in the mouth of an informer, a spy, a briber, can become bigger than anybody who tries to destroy it. Truth survives.

  Adela Rogers St. Johns

  Truth, Men, Shining

  54 Copy quote

• In writing a little tragedy, 'The Gaol Gate,' I made the scenario in three lines, 'He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged.' I wrote that play very quickly.

  Lady Gregory

  Writing, Play, Tragedy

  Lady Gregory (1970). “The Collected Plays: The tragedies and tragic-comedies”, Colin Smythe

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

  James Connolly

  Army, Land, Judging

  209 Copy quote

• Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Sadness, Suffering, Despair

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.

  Aristotle

  War, Tyrants, People

  32 Copy quote

• By the time of the GDR's demise, two in every 13 citizens were informers.

  Luke Harding

  Two, Citizens, Demise

  Luke Harding (2014). “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man”, p.165, Guardian Faber Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

  Sam Harris

  Men, Religion, Bishops

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.84, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• From that point on, the extraordinary system of spies and informers which has played an important part in the political work of the French state into our own time took shape. (Sartine, who became lieutenant general de police in 1759, is supposed to have said to Louis XV, "Sire, when three people are chatting in the street one of them is surely my man.") Eighteenth-century police manuals like those of Colquhoun in England or Lemaire in France are no less than general treatises on the government's full repertoire of domestic regulation, coercion, and surveillance.

  Charles Tilly

  Men, People, Political

  Charles Tilly, Gabriel Ardant, Social Science Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Comparative Politics (1975). “The Formation of national States in Western Europe”, Princeton Univ Pr

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you say, "Would there were no wine" because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel," because of the murderers, "Would there were no night," because of the thieves, "Would there were no light," because of the informers, and "Would there were no women," because of adultery.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  War, Wine, Night

  32 Copy quote

• Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can.

  Arthur Koestler

  Country, School, Ignorance

  4 Copy quote

• ...this bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an 'informer' psychology in great areas of our national life-neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen-were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an 'informer' psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.

  Barry Goldwater

  Selfish, Police, Psychology

  18 Copy quote

• The American Communist Party was notoriously infiltrated by informers, some working for the FBI, some for capitalist employers. At one time it used to be said that spies practically kept the Party going with their dues and contributions.

  Helen Lawrenson

  Party, Spy, Communism

  4 Copy quote