Spy Quotes

• It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

  John le Carre

  John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway.

  Rachel Maddow

  Beautiful, Hug, Defense

  Rachel Maddow (2012). “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power”, p.6, Broadway Books

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• The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

  Graham Greene

  Party, Inspiration, People

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• It is ten thousand times cheaper to pay the best spies lavishly than even a tiny army poorly.

  Sun Tzu

  Army, Pay, Tiny

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• Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

  Jane Austen

  Funny, Reality, Men

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• Spies go to bars for the same reason people go to libraries: full of information if you know where to ask.

  Michael Weston

  People, Library, Bars

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• There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism.

  Max Lerner

  Ambition, Vanity, Desire

  Max Lerner (1959). “The unfinished country: a book of American symbols”

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• The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.

  Aristotle

  War, Men, Light

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• Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Crazy, Opportunity, Way

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Mother Night: A Novel”, p.191, Dial Press

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• It is an ambassador's duty to stand up for his nation's foreign policy in any era and under any government whatsoever. Ambassadors are, in the full meaning of the term, titled spies.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Power, Government, Ambassadors

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• A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

  John le Carre

  Population, Literature, Stealing

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• The life of spies is to know, not bee known.

  George Herbert

  Bees, Knows, Known

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.367

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• Spies are the ears and eyes of Princes.

  George Herbert

  Eye, Ears

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.324

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• Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

  Richard Armitage

  Real, Believe, Thinking

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• The birds are the eyes of heaven, and the flies are the spies of hell.

  Suzy Kassem

  Eye, Bird, Heaven

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• Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity; They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness; Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports; Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of warfare; If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Military, War

  "Strategy Six Pack".

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• For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.

  John le Carre

  World, Couches, Subconscious

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• When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

  William Shakespeare

  Sympathy, Sadness, Sad Life

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 4, sc. 5, l. [78]

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• The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.

  Sun Tzu

  Wise, Art, War

  Sun Tzu, Shang Yang (1997). “The Art of War”, p.32, Wordsworth Editions

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• There aren't enough secrets to go round anymore. Some spies are having to invent secrets in order to earn a living.

  Shelagh Delaney

  Order, Secret, Enough

  Shelagh Delaney (1963). “Sweetly Sings the Donkey”

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• There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind.

  Mort Sahl

  Years, Two, Secret

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• A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

  Honore de Balzac

  Night, Mad, Bed

  Honore de Balzac (2014). “The Elixir of Life”, p.5, The Floating Press

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• It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.

  Maxim Gorky

  Garden, Air, Peaceful

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• Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

  Stephen King

  Friendship, True Friendship, Privacy

  Stephen King (1999). “Hearts In Atlantis”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy. Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Enemy, Firsts

  Sun Tzu (2010). “The Art of War”, p.47, Cosimo, Inc.

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