Espionage Quotes

If this were some kind of entertainment, this would be roughly the point where Rupert said, "We don't have any more time, Professor, you must complete your research as soon as possible," but there was no great sense of urgency, no sense that it even mattered. It was just something that Rudi was interested in, for his own reasons. They could be working on this for years and still not understand it, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
He said, "Look, Professor, a lot of effort went into getting you that information. We'd be grateful if you could make some kind of sense of it reasonably soon.
"There is one thing I can tell you right now," Lev said..."Whoever is running this thing, they're really interested in railways. ~ Dave Hutchinson

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game. ~ Ben Macintyre

You know how much I love you and the girls with all my heart, but being with Ruairi... I never realized there was something missing until I found it. ~ Victoria Roberts

Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own. ~ John Le Carre

Espionage and counterespionage go together like horse and carriage. ~ Charles McCarry

Even though we don't know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they'll be able to say is: "We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don't know about or can't talk about. ~ Bruce Schneier

First the FSB agent, and now the FBI. It was becoming a real alphabet soup of international espionage. ~ Kenneth Eade

If you agree to work for us, half the time you won't know the purpose of your duties ... and when we do explain, we might not be telling the truth. But that's the real world, folks ... ~ James Alan Gardner

In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates ~ Michel Foucault

Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy. ~ Jimmy Doolittle

It was nearly impossible to keep anything a secret, especially from her
sisters, the youngest of whom - Hyacinth - could probably have won the war against Napoleon in half
the time if His Majesty had only thought to draft her into the espionage service. ~ Julia Quinn

Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization. ~ Ida Tarbell

The moral panic about supposedly unpatriotic educators was driven by international war hysteria combined with agitation over the growing domestic political strength of teachers unions. In 1917 and 1918, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which sought to ban public speech and actions "disloyal" to the United States military and government, especially among socialists, communists, pacifists, immigrants, and other groups perceived as affiliated with European leftism. More than any other force, the American Legion, a veterans' organization, pushed this ethos of unquestioning patriotism onto the nation's public schools. The Legion was influential: 16 U.S. senators and 130 congressmen identified as members. It promoted the idea that the Communist Party in Moscow actively recruited American teachers in order to enlist them in brainwashing the nation's youth. The Legion saw all left-of-center political activity as unacceptably anti-American. ~ Dana Goldstein

One could plot violent espionage and still hope for dessert. ~ Leigh Bardugo

If there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epitaph, thought Barley. 'There was no sea-gull, so he aborted. ~ John Le Carre

You were not merely a person unjustly accused of espionage, but someone who dared to challenge certain customs. And for that you could not be forgiven. However, ~ Paulo Coelho

My name is E. Howard Hunt. I'm currently retired from more than 22 years in the profession of espionage. ~ E. Howard Hunt

Li, a willowy manboy with a shock of black hair atop a mouthful of bad teeth was the brother-in-law he had introduced to industrial espionage several years back. Rong often regretted that. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Spying is waiting. ~ John Le Carre

We already have the cops, the FBI and the CIA looking for us, not to mention the enemy. The last thing we need is for MI6 to get in on the hunt, too. -Cade Knight ~ Brian Bern

He didn't have regular email like everyone else. He couldn't afford that digital fingerprint that the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and all the other espionage alphabeticals counted on for their privacy-bashing surveillance of the entire formerly free world. ~ Kenneth Eade

I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business
the most talented espionage novelist of our generation. ~ Vince Flynn

For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, " 'does engage' in computer network exploitation," but "does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including 'cyber' " [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its "customers," a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce: ~ Glenn Greenwald

He might be mortal, but he was a skilled adversary, a dangerous foe with espionage skills that far surpassed even Denae's.
As an ally, Henry was clever, shrewd, cunning, and brilliant. A perfect partner for the Kings.
"I'll take him to safety if he's such a danger here," Rhi told Usaeil.
The queen lifted a black brow. "You surprise me again."
"It's my new thing." Rhi looked down at her black nails with two small hearts painted in red - Big Apple Red - on each ring finger. ~ Donna Grant

Fly safe, little canary; I'll miss you. ~ E.V. Greig

He hated words. Words glossed every real thing with brittle artifice and deceit. Words were always lies, always intended to deceive even when they held the truth. . . . ~ Bill Granger

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'. ~ Kim Zetter

Semtex, PE4, C-4, Plastrite, Netrolit, Spring Korper, Rowanex
Cono felt slightly shameful about his familiarity with plastics, and yet seeing them here, even so amateurishly arranged, gave him a perverse comfort. ~ Victor Robert Lee

I'd love to do a sci-fi movie, a western, or an espionage thriller. But I'm not going to limit myself. If a good script comes along, I'm not going to discount it because it doesn't fit into one of these genres. ~ Park Chan-wook

Why am I telling you this?'
'So you'll have an excuse to kill me?'
'That's probably it. ~ Mick Herron

All women are natural born espionage agents. ~ Eddie Cantor

In the case of Pakistan, the CIA actually used a fake vaccination campaign to try to locate Osama bin Laden, so now vaccination is associated with espionage. ~ Eula Biss

After receiving such a warm welcome, it sounded to me like the Directorate of Intelligence had placed me on the CIA's "don't screw with this guy list". This list was something of an urban legend throughout The Company. Once on it, you had it made. Everyone at the CIA would go out of his or her way to be helpful and red tape would magically vanish for you. It meant that you had a very powerful patron at the top levels of the Agency. I may have been hustled out of Headquarters but I apparently still had a very powerful friend in high places. ~ Michael Connick

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! ~ Leonard Leventon

Question of Official Secrets Act confronts Delhi Police probe By Shreeja Sen | 553 words New Delhi: Investigations into an alleged corporate espionage case are on at full steam, the Delhi Police said on Sunday even as it held around a dozen people in detention after confidential documents were stolen from the petroleum ministry. With the detainees yet to be charged, the police are proceeding only under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 - Sections 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). ~ Anonymous

We all know I won't be killed because of this stupid allegation of espionage, but because I decided to be who I always dreamed. And the price of a dream is always high. ~ Paulo Coelho

I will not pretend to justify this espionage I carried on, and I will say openly that all these signs of a life full of intellectual curiosity, but thoroughly slovenly and disorderly at the same time, inspired me at first with aversion and mistrust. I am not only a middle-class man, living a regular life, fond of work and punctuality; I am also an abstainer and a nonsmoker, and these bottles in Haller's room pleased me even less than the rest of his artistic disorder. ~ Hermann Hesse

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game. ~ Rebecca West

Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9) ~ John Le Carre

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things. ~ John Le Carre

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop. ~ John Le Carre

This is the wonderful thing about espionage, nothing exists any more. ~ William Stephenson

To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them there is up to me. ~ Vladimir Putin

The angel of death can hardly have friends. And the prom, what about Danny? He can hardly have a Valkyrie for his date. ~ Jacques Antoine

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find. ~ Otto Penzler

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.
I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator's underpants!
Chase's thoughts raced. ~ Cole Alpaugh

Eyes closed, she let her pain float away with the prayers, higher and higher, around the mosque's minarets, and up to the sky. She thought about the old Arabic saying that a woman has only two exits. One exit leads from my father's house to my husband's. The other leads from my husband's house to my grave. I'm not ready for the second exit yet. ~ Christian F. Burton

It was their vampire teacher's custom of late to administer decidedly oddball lessons. Which is to say, more oddball than an ordinary lesson with a vampire in a floating dirigible espionage school. ~ Gail Carriger

He and I, we're friends. Does that sound odd? Me, friends with a pinko journalist?'
Nothing sounded odd to Lamb; except, perhaps, that people had friends. ~ Mick Herron

You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause. ~ John Le Carre

Magic is used in espionage, all the time, for clandestine things. I've got a whole library from a gentleman who was hired by the CIA to create magic technology for the use of anti-terrorism. ~ David Copperfield

You don't fight America…You get America's Democratic and Republican parties to fight each other... and destroy each other. Worst case scenario…the enemy can slip thru the back door while they are fight like third graders.
~~High Commander Mustafa ~ James Morris Robinson

When I accepted the commission, I had something of an epiphany in the research I did about the agency, actually the science of espionage. I realized there is a connection between the sciences and the invisible forces of man. ~ James Sanborn

Hatred could not be the basis of her resolution to fight. It provided no access to her own qi, her vital spirit. That was the deepest truth she knew about fighting. It's what she learned from her father and Sensei: fight from the peaceful place inside, from her father's place. ~ Jacques Antoine

These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power. ~ Edward Snowden

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence. ~ John Le Carre

It is ironic that Mr. Berger learned of this espionage in exactly the same month that Mr. Gore was attending his now famous fund-raiser with Buddhist nuns in Southern California. ~ Lamar Alexander

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used. ~ Sun Tzu

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? ~ John Le Carre

My father once told me that it's not enough for a man to be lucky; that a guy has to know when that streak is on for him. ~ Henry Mosquera

People who are different are considered ineffective. People who can't hide their shortcomings are not considered a threat. A lot of spies rely on being unobtrusive, but we flat out flaunt the fact that we're different, and those we try to get information from put us on an even lower level than the ones they don't notice. They don't believe we're even capable of being a threat, and they misstep more than they might with someone they simply don't know. ~ Lynn Blackmar

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union. ~ Aldrich Ames

The first rule in keeping secrets is nothing on paper: paper can be lost or stolen or simply inherited by the wrong people; if you really want to keep something secret, don't write it down. ~ Thomas Powers

In Shara's estimation, lists form one half of the heart of intelligence, the second half being patience. Most espionage work, after all, is a matter of collecting data and categorizing it: who belongs to which group, and why; where are they now, and how are we sure, and do we have someone else in the region; and now that we have cataloged those groups, what threat level should they be categorized under; and so on, and so on, and so on. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

We need to make sure that whenever we're engaging in a cyber-warfare campaign, a cyber-espionage campaign in the United States, that we understand the word cyber is used as a euphemism for the internet, because the American public would not be excited to hear that we're doing internet warfare campaigns, internet espionage campaigns, because we realize that we ourselves are impacted by it. ~ Edward Snowden

McGrath smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. He was silently gazing along the copper colored pathway as though it led to a mystical place where men found answers just lying, uncovered on the warm, soft earth. A place where men knew everything and the blackness of infinity was just a ghost story told to scare children. ~ Mark Arundel

There's Nazis and espionage. Everything can be explained by Nazis and espionage. ~ Paul Anderson

As is now generally admitted, a Soviet bomb would not have been achieved for several years more but for the success of Soviet espionage in obtaining secret information from Western scientists associated with the Manhattan Project. That is to say, political ideas in the minds of certain capable physicists and others took the form of believing that to provide Stalin with the bomb was a
contribution to world progress. They were wrong. And their decisions show, once again, that minds of high quality in other respects are not immune to political or ideological delirium ... In the Soviet case, those involved thought they knew better than mere politicians like Churchill. They didn't. ~ Robert Conquest

You couldn't trust anyone or anything that belonged to the world of espionage. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Out in the field, any connection with home just makes you weaker. It reminds you that you were once civilized, soft; and that can get you killed faster than a bullet through the head. ~ Henry Mosquera

Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world's problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor's dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else? ~ Cole Alpaugh

Like a black hole, NSA pulls in every signal that comes near, but no electron is ever allowed to escape. ~ James Bamford

Espionage, Sophronia had learned, was tough on petticoats. ~ Gail Carriger

The common theme here was contempt: a poisonous disregard for human life. For Vladimir Putin's critics have an uncanny habit of turning up dead. ~ Luke Harding

When you're delivering information that you don't believe in or are lying about, you manifest the same behaviors as suspects in criminal or espionage cases who are lying to officers or agents." Wright's advice: believe in what you're saying (chapter 1). "If you don't believe what you're saying, your movements will be awkward and not natural. No amount of training - unless you're a trained espionage agent or psychopath - will allow you to break that incongruence between your words and actions. If you don't believe in the message, you cannot force your body to act as though you believe in the message. ~ Carmine Gallo

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. ~ John Flanagan

Can we move on now?" she continued, trying to keep her voice steady, and adjusting her dress in the effort.
He sat up and pulled his pants back on.
"Or is wild incredible sex with me part of your master espionage plan or something? ~ Angela Claire

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never."
"So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?"
"Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God. ~ John Le Carre

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust. ~ Aldrich Ames

With werewolves gone and fire stoked, Sidheav stopped shaking. The tea, once it arrived, had its customary effect
engendering comfort and loosening the tongue. *That's tea for you*, thought Sophronia, *the great social lubricant.* Soon they had the whole story out of her. No wonder tea was considered a vital weapon of espionage. ~ Gail Carriger

How different her life would be if Orrin hadn't contacted her in July. She wouldn't be embroiled in kidnapping, espionage, and murder. ~ Donna Grant

...and I was reminded....of the everday boredom of a life in espionage. One is always waiting for someone who does not show up,for something that does not happen. ~ Charles McCarry

Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves. ~ Richard Heuer

The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention. ~ Paul Blobel

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.
- Winston S. Churchill ~ Ellen Brazer

Caution is a spy's best friend; paranoia is his enemy. ~ Jack Barsky

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing. ~ Aaron Eckhart

Espionage has something of the quality of a dream. In the spy's world, as in dreams, the terrain is always uncertain. You put your foot on what looks like solid ground and it gives way under you and you go into a kind of free fall, turning slowly tail over tip and clutching onto things that are themselves falling. This instability, this myriad-ness, that the world takes on, is both the attraction and terror of being a spy. Attraction, because in the midst of such uncertainty you are never required to be yourself; whatever you do, there is another, alternative you standing invisibly to one side, observing, evaluating, remembering…. This is the secret power of the spy… it is the power to be and not be, to detach oneself from oneself, to be oneself and at the same time another. The trouble is, if I were always at least two versions of myself, so all others must be similarly twinned with themselves in this awful, slippery way. ~ John Banville

What?" He cut a grin at Kat when he saw the impressed look on her face. "Corporate espionage is my second greatest passion.'
"With your first being ... " Kat prompted.
"Gelato," Hale said, and turned back to the group. ~ Ally Carter

There are no hackers, there are only spies. Hacking is nothing more than the natural evolution of espionage. ~ Eric O'Neill

It is amazing what a woman can do if only she ignores what men tell her she can't. ~ Carol K. Carr

Cheating was a concept both foreign and integral to the fighting of wars. ~ Tom Clancy

Jobs can feel familiar, but familiarity is a dangerous feeling. In espionage and mercenary work, there's no such thing as routine. ~ Nathan Edmondson

Gardington was made over to me once, by the Crown. It's one of their standard good-conduct prizes for espionage.'

Philippa said, rather blankly, 'I thought you were spying at that time for Scotland.'

'Well, I wasn't spying for England,' Lymond said. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy. ~ Ron Paul

Good intelligence work, Control had always preached, was gradual and rested on a kind of gentleness. ~ John Le Carre

All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him. ~ Sun Tzu

The Internet has made us richer, freer, connected and informed in ways its founders could not have dreamt of. It has also become a vector of attack, espionage, crime and harm. ~ George Osborne

With what moral authority can [the US] speak of human rights ... the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; where the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated ... Where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings. ~ Fidel Castro

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage. ~ Wes Craven