PRIVACY QUOTES II
quotations about privacy
He has not spent his life badly who has passed it from his birth to his burial in privacy.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
Who are you? Why do you hide in the darkness and listen to my private thoughts?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important -- it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not -- but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone.
NICK HARKAWAY
The Blind Giant
Maybe all of us ... had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.
KAZUO ISHIGURO
Never Let Me Go
There is a sacred realm of privacy for every man and woman where he makes his choices and decisions--a realm of his own essential rights and liberties into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude.
GEOFFREY FISHER
Look Magazine, March 17, 1959
There is a self-imposed privacy less easily invaded than convent walls.
HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN
The Optimist: A Series of Essays
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Excessive privacy and constant retirement are apt to make men out of humor with others, and too fond of themselves.
REV. J. CAIRD
attributed, Day's Collacon
The types of collection in the book -- microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us -- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.
EDWARD SNOWDEN
"Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished", Washington Post, December 23, 2013
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Asfixia
A private life is not only more pleasant, but more happy than any princely state.
REV. R. BAIRD
attributed, Day's Collacon
We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS
dissenting opinion, Osborn v. United States, 1966
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
ANTHONY BURGESS
Homage to Qwert Yuiop: Essays
Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in.
PAUL MCMULLAN
statement to the Leveson Inquiry, November 29, 2011
Private life favoreth happiness.
SEE-MA-KOANG
attributed, Day's Collacon
The privacy that older generations once enjoyed is now the stuff of nostalgia. Younger people have a different understanding of what it entails. Those who grew up being able to stay in constant touch with their friends have come of age and are reshaping the world accordingly. We live in times when a personal relationship can be jettisoned because a digital message goes unanswered for a few minutes too long, where couples announce their decisions to divorce on Instagram.
EDITOR
The Nation, May 28, 2016
Private interests must yield to public good.
EDMUND GETTY
The Last King of Ulster
Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street; if thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Enchiridion Institutions