George F. Kennan Quotes

All confidence placed in another is dangerous if it is not perfect, for on almost all occasions we ought to tell everything or to conceal everything. We have already told too much of our secret, if one single circumstance is to be kept back.

The only way to keep your secrets safe is to have none at all.

We try and be as open as we can, and to protect the secrets that we must protect.

It's not fun to keep secrets, but sometimes you have to do it to protect yourself. And to protect people around you. - Meredith, p112

Don't have any more secrets than you can keep yourself.

I think secrets are something that you keep or are afraid to share because you think they're going to harm you in some way. So if you don't have any secrets, then there's no way anyone can harm you.

I'm not so great at keeping secrets; maybe that's why no one ever tells me things.

They keep their own secrets alike from foe and friends

The best way to keep a secret is to never have it.

I'm not convinced that every secret has to be published. I think there are secrets worth keeping, and I think there are secrets not worth keeping.

I'm not very good at keeping secrets.

Tell no one the secret that you want to keep, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so careful of your secret as yourself.

The rules that I shall propose concerning secrecy, and from which I think it not safe to deviate without long and exact deliberation, are, never to solicit the knowledge of a secret,--not willingly, nor without many limitations, to accept such confidence when it is offered; when a secret is once admitted, to consider the trust as of a very high nature, important as society and sacred as truth, and therefore not to be violated for any incidental convenience, or slight appearance of contrary fitness.

Do you think I just turn my secrets out for everyone?" He is unfazed. "I didn't know they were secrets," he says. "Or I wouldn't have asked.

If you have a secret, keep it to yourself.

The thing about secrets is that they are usually best kept by just one person. That was the special thing about secrets. Some people seemed to think that the best way to keep a secret was to tell as many people as possible; what could possibly go wrong for a secret when there were so many people defending it?

It is vain to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it. It will tell itself.

It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

I've always been really interested in secrets - how people find ways of doing things without telling anyone else in order to keep themselves feeling safe in the world.

We all have secrets. We've all kept secrets. We've had secrets kept from us, and we know how that feels.

God forbid we keep a couple secrets in this day and age!

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

When I wrote 'Before The Dawn,' I made it quite clear that there are lots of people involved in my life who I can't talk about simply because I'd put them at risk.

Of course, a secret is no good if it doesn't need to be a secret.