Klaus Fuchs Quotes

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.

I could have been a top notch spy. People confess the most amazing secrets to me, even when I am not fishing for those nuggets. I must look trustworthy because I sit there with a video camera or a tape recorder while the stories pour out.

That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.

When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'

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

Betrayal, in one form or another, is at the very heart of the world of intelligence.

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.

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

There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.

In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.

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.

I am literally the worst person at keeping secrets. I'd be the worst spy of all time.

I will not, nor will I ever, publicly divulge sensitive intelligence sources and methods. For when that happens, our national security is endangered and lives can be lost.

Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

The information I received as a member of the National Security Council, in my capacity as Vice—President, was so confidential that I would lose my right arm before I divulge it to anyone, even to members of my own family…

There is only one law of espionage—there are always going to be spies.

What you would hide from an enemy don't tell a friend.

If you set foot on your enemies' land, get spies on them. Choose those whom you count on for their truthfulness and advice, whether Arabs or inhabitants of that land. Liars' accounts would not benefit you, even if some of them were true; the deceiver is a spy against you and not for you.

Keep an eye on him who enters announcing that what he asks is secret

This town leaks like a sieve. Sometimes I think that the easiest thing on the world would be to be a spy against the United States of America

They keep their own secrets alike from foe and friends

I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of [CIA] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.