154 Quotes About Espionage

We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?

Informants can be helpful, but they are never infallible. All tools can break, or be turned into weapons.

No one is worse at keeping secrets than the secret services

The nations, of course, that are most at risk of a destructive digital attack are the ones with the greatest connectivity. Marcus Ranum, one of the early innovators of the computer firewall, called Stuxnet 'a stone thrown by people who live in a glass house'.

Baptists do not kneel before God, Tom.

Spies are, by nature and necessity, pathological liars who strive to make their endgames justify their meanness.

This formidable officine dates from Peter the Great, who formed it in 1697...its historic origins must, however, be looked for much earlier; one finds them in the byzantine traditions and in the operations of the Tartar domination...espionage, delation, torture, and secret executions were the normal and regulating instruments of the |||||||| police.

...at the time, King Herbert felt that to remain safe, the kingdom needed an effective intelligence force.""An intelligent force?" said Will."Not intelligent. Intelligence. Although it does help if your intelligence force was also intelligent.

When a spy sells something entirely new, all he needs to do is recount something you could find in any second-hand book stall.