Spy quotes:

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  • Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe. -- Agnes Smedley
  • A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it. -- John le Carre
  • In some roles I have to wear fur, and I always make sure it's fake, like in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Faux fur is great because it shows people that faux can look fabulous. -- Kristen Johnston
  • 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
  • Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies. -- Jane Austen
  • When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. -- William Shakespeare
  • It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? -- John le Carre
  • Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that? -- Alan Furst
  • I think 'I Spy,' still when you look at it, speaks volumes in terms of propaganda for equality. It's just magnificent. -- Bill Cosby
  • From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.' -- Barry Eisler
  • I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes. -- E. M. Forster
  • 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
  • I Spy' represents the absence of the tension of the black man or black woman or anyone of that color walking in, so that the white racist person can become entertaining to a viewer. -- Bill Cosby
  • Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action... -- Aristotle
  • 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
  • I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto. -- Jess Walter
  • The church is: a conspiracy of love for a dying world, a spy mission into enemy occupied territory ruled by the powers of evil; a prophet from God with the greatest news the world has ever heard, the most life changing and most revolutionary institution that has existed on earth. -- Peter Kreeft
  • The Chinese, on the other hand, were in the position of having an American military spy plane on a Chinese military base and they had their own internal problems to deal with. At first, the Chinese weren't all that belligerent. They were just stalling to get their own bureaucracy in line. -- Henry A. Kissinger
  • I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them. -- Charles Cumming
  • This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders. -- Sarah Orne Jewett
  • What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue. -- Annie Dillard
  • Spy plots are hard, really hard. -- Rashida Jones
  • I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times. -- Alison Bechdel
  • The Spy Act prohibits keystroke logging, hijacking, and phishing. -- Cliff Stearns
  • Spy' is such a short ugly word. I prefer 'espionage.' Those extra three syllables really say something. -- Howard Tayler
  • My perception of making a movie before I started making movies was that it would be like Spy Kids. -- Katie Chang
  • My perception of making a movie before I started making movies was that it would be like 'Spy Kids'. -- Katie Chang
  • The Soul unto itself Is an imperial friend, - Or the most agonizing Spy - An Enemy - could send - -- Emily Dickinson
  • A very, very impressive director, Tomas Alfredson. It's only his second film [ 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'], but he's a real find. -- John Hurt
  • When people don't do anything they don't think anything, and when people don't think anything there's nothing to think about them.- Harriet the Spy -- Louise Fitzhugh
  • The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. -- John le Carre
  • The cool thing about 'Spy Kids 3D: Game Over' was that Robert Rodriguez brought back 3D. I feel like he did with that film. Now, every film is 3D. -- Daryl Sabara
  • Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time. -- Malcolm Gladwell
  • I usually have a couple of projects going on that are different. A 'Sin City' while I'm doing a 'Spy Kids' at the same time. I need different things going on. -- Robert Rodriguez
  • I once dated a guy who was like, 'Holy sh--, I just made out with Harriet the Spy!' And that's messed up. Don't say that. I was 10, you're 30, it's just weird. -- Michelle Trachtenberg
  • The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. -- John le Carre
  • Alan Cumming was such a fun guy to watch. I remember he has a song in the first 'Spy Kids' movie, and when Danny Elfman came to set, they were working on the song. -- Daryl Sabara
  • I played the mom in Spy Kids when I was, like, 27. So it was ridiculous. But [Robert Rodriguez] was like, "You know what? If we do our job right, no one will question it." And nobody did. -- Carla Gugino
  • They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing. -- Terry Gilliam
  • I don't know why there hasn't been a 'Spy Kids' cartoon. You have to bring that up to Robert Rodriguez and see what he has to say. That would be an interesting thing to do with this series. -- Daryl Sabara
  • Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy. -- Christopher Paul Curtis
  • The Spy Act strikes a right balance between preserving legitimate and benign uses of this technology, while still, at the same time, protecting unwitting consumers from the harm caused when it is misused and, of course, designed for nefarious purposes. -- Cliff Stearns
  • My favorite sequels are basically all Mike Myers films - 'Wayne's World 2,' 'Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,' 'Shrek 2.' Anything he does, it's best the second time around. He needs to do 'So I Married an Axe Murderer 2.' -- Adam DeVine
  • Setting people to spy on one another is not the way to protect freedom. -- Tommy Douglas
  • I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects. -- Jackie Chan
  • I am literally the worst person at keeping secrets. I'd be the worst spy of all time. -- Keri Russell
  • With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught. -- Annie Jacobsen
  • My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education. -- Vladimir Putin
  • The role of women has always been undervalued in the spy world, always undermined in terms of recognition. Unfairly so. It's a world that needs women. -- Helen Mirren
  • I know not every mom is a secret KGB spy, but every mom has this whole other life. Every dad and every person has this whole other life. -- Keri Russell
  • Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now. -- Edward Snowden
  • We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own. -- John le Carre
  • The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. -- Michael Hastings
  • The Patriot Act is ludicrous. Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total genocide, not subtle little hacks of the U.S. infrastructure, yet the government wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone's communications. -- Kevin Mitnick
  • I am probably not alone in sensing above me the huge corporations and monstrous banks, science, politics and technologies, spy satellites and stock markets, military systems and massive wealth - forces and dynamics I don't understand or can hardly imagine. -- Michael Leunig
  • What I'm getting at is, you know, if we really want to get serious about helping all the people living in the street and getting people jobs, we could just hire half the people in the country to spy on the other half. -- Jello Biafra
  • Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, 'conscience,' watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a 'matter of conscience,' i.e. police business. -- Max Stirner
  • The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom. -- Evgeny Morozov
  • I give my grandfather, Dr Harold Young, a forestry Professor at the University of Maine, full credit for my career path. He pioneered the use of aerial photography in forestry in the 1950s, and we think he worked as a spy for the CIA during the Cold War, mapping Russian installations. -- Sarah Parcak
  • I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself. -- John le Carre
  • The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days. -- John le Carre
  • It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely. -- John le Carre
  • For a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism - can anyone ever distinguish the two? - leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived. His masters vow to punish him, and he heads for Moscow in a desperate search for refuge. -- Alex Berenson
  • I always liked spy stories. -- Walter Wager
  • I invented the historical spy novel. -- Alan Furst
  • Friends don't spy; true friendship is about privacy, too. -- Stephen King
  • I'm not a spy, which is the real question -- Edward Snowden
  • I spy with my little eye a great story. -- John Green
  • I'm almost incapable of lying. I'd be a terrible spy. -- Gary Oldman
  • Being a filmmaker is kind of like being a glorified spy. -- Jehane Noujaim
  • Even through the hollow eyes of death I spy life peering. -- William Shakespeare
  • I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with ... G." "Sausages. -- Adam Rex
  • Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words. -- Stendhal
  • And as every spy knows, common enemies are how allies always begin. -- Ally Carter
  • I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel. -- Alan Furst
  • Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know. -- William Davenant
  • Life is a struggle and a good spy goes in there and fights. -- Louise Fitzhugh
  • I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . . -- William S. Burroughs
  • I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter. -- Edward Snowden
  • All seems infected that th' infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. -- Alexander Pope
  • The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent. -- Aldrich Ames
  • When I was a kid, I wanted to be a spy detective or a rock star. -- Jill Sobule
  • However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it. -- Christine Keeler
  • People say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. It's not. It's eye bloody spy. -- Molly Looby
  • Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible. -- Kurt Vonnegut
  • How can it be a spy satellite if they announce on television that it's a spy satellite? -- George Carlin
  • Love is a spy who is plotting treason, In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  • I grew up on genre - on Westerns, spy thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy novels, horror novels. Especially horror novels. -- Benjamin Percy
  • I'm a spy... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business. -- Tom Clancy
  • We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay. -- Gena Showalter
  • I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing. -- Charles Stross
  • We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. -- Barack Obama
  • All these years I'd thought being a spy was challenging. Turns out, being a girl is the tricky part. -- Ally Carter
  • Glass is the world's worst spy camera. If you want to surreptitiously take photos, I would not use Glass. -- Astro Teller
  • They were conspiring to desert us in the night and steal some of our horses... we engaged a spy. -- Zebulon Pike
  • It's a thrilling world, and people really like stories about secrets, which is the essence of a spy drama. -- Andrew Scott
  • I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight. -- Edward Snowden
  • If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you. -- Herta Muller
  • I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me. -- Elizabeth Hurley
  • Choosing providers is not a choice between surveillance/not; it's just choosing which feudal lord gets to spy on you. -- Bruce Schneier
  • In my head, I think I'd make a perfect spy, but in reality, I don't think I'd fare very well. -- Matthew Rhys
  • I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem. -- Benedict Cumberbatch
  • The Confederates had suspected Wild Bill of being a spy for two or three days, and had watched him closely. -- Buffalo Bill
  • A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark. -- Marcus Aurelius
  • Sunny days are the perfect days to spy on people. Especially at night (offer only valid for residents of Alaska). -- Jarod Kintz
  • That's when it really came together for me that I was in a Bond film, to have my own spy car! -- Rick Yune
  • What I find interesting about Captain Action is that he is more an adventurer and spy than he is a soldier. -- Chris Roberson
  • She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said 'Be careful his bowtie is really a camera' -- Paul Simon
  • It is illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans and an affront to our Republic to spy on the Senate. -- Rand Paul
  • I think it was the sense that Turn is a spy thriller, and that's a genre that really fascinates me, in general. -- Jamie Bell
  • I think I would have been a hopeless spy. I love telling stories and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret. -- Ben Macintyre
  • I think James Bond is a spy. He's not superhuman. Calling him a superhero is like calling James Bond movies "comic-book movies." -- Kurt Busiek
  • 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
  • Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best. -- Alan Furst
  • He was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed . -- Diogenes
  • I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things. -- Christopher Lee
  • What is a Gallagher Girl? She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy... a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be. -- Ally Carter
  • I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help. -- Julia Child
  • Will you walk into my parlour? Said the spider to a fly: '"Tis the prettiest little parlour That ever you did spy. -- Mary Howitt
  • The spy genre is something which, as a fan of movies, a movie geek myself, I just love that cinematic joy that they bring. -- Pierce Brosnan
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