David Brin Quotes

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

We all make mistakes. In public life, we make them in public view.

The only really safe thing to do is to write a diary of where you've been, what time you went to bed, what you ate. If I wrote honestly about everything I think it'd be a disaster. It would cause a lot of trouble.

It is almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble.

Bury your mistakes.

A mistake that is kept secret only harms the person who has committed it, but if it becomes public and is not denounced, it harms the community

Scandals are only increased by hushing them up.

If you make a mistake, people are going to know about it really fast - and I was making a ton of them when I was a kid.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. You should be an open book, be transparent.

There's no good that can come out of secrecy.

We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place

Whatsoever you hide goes on growing, and whatsoever you expose, if it is wrong it disappears, evaporates in the sun, and if it is right it is nourished.

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.

Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.

Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.

If you're first, no one will ever remember. If you're wrong, no one will ever forget.

Do not do that which you would not have known.

Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.

It is inconceivable that anyone could say we have tried to hide anything

Everything goes wrong for a government which is going wrong

People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.