PRIVACY QUOTES II
quotations about privacy
The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
"Whether it's hacking or the NSA, some of us don't accept that privacy is dead", The Guardian, October 31, 2013
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
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
There is a self-imposed privacy less easily invaded than convent walls.
HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN
The Optimist: A Series of Essays
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
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
There is a privacy in every man's conduct that policy should teach him to retain.
NORMAN MACDONALD
attributed, Day's Collacon
But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.
JHUMPA LAHIRI
The Namesake
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
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
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
Intimacy is an important part of a happy relationship, but so is a healthy respect for each other's privacy.
LESLIE BECKER-PHELPS
"How Much Privacy Is Good for a Relationship?", WebMD, June 1, 2016
Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal tepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place.
PHYLLIS MCGINLEY
"A Lost Privilege", The Province of the Heart
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
ANTHONY BURGESS
Homage to Qwert Yuiop: Essays
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
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
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Asfixia
The empowerment given ordinary citizens by the social media is testing the limits of just how much personal privacy can be chipped away. The digital revolution is fuelling a competition that not long ago was the exclusive territory of the professional news media. And when it comes to being the first to report a story, "healthy competition" can turn nasty in a hurry.
EDITOR
The Nation, May 28, 2016
He has not spent his life badly who has passed it from his birth to his burial in privacy.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.
JAMES MADISON
Letters and Other Writings of James Madison