J. Edgar Hoover Quotes

Oh, well, there's a difference between privacy and secrecy.

Keep the problems of clients and prospects confidential. Divulge information only with their consent.

I've got nothing to hide.

I have nothing to hide!

Some secrets are meant to be taken to the grave, and that's what I plan on doing with all mine. They're not necessarily my secrets to tell. I'm the gatekeeper of other people's secrets.

Nothing on paper; paper can be lost or stolen or simply inherited by the wrong people; if you want to keep something secret, don't write it down.

I'm not exposing anything thats private - that's one thing I won't do.

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

Confidentiality is the essence of being trusted.

From your confessor, lawyer and physician, hide not your case on no condition.

We don't need secrecy.

If you want to keep something concealed from your enemy, don't disclose it to your friend.

It is up to the government to keep the government's secrets.

People have given me classified information, but always with the disclaimer 'This can never end up in a book.' And it never does.

I keep everything that's private private.

I really fight for my privacy.

I just knew at an early time in my life how important privacy was.

Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves.

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law. The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

Our agency (the Central Intelligence Agency) is the last refuge of organizational privacy available to the U. S. Government.

Historically our government—the FBI for example—has not always earned that trust.

Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.