Top 388 Spy Quotes & Sayings

I always liked spy stories.

Of John Le Carre's books, I've only read 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,' and I haven't read anything by Graham Greene, but I've heard a great deal about how 'Your Republic Is Calling You' reminded English readers of those two writers. I don't really have any particular interest in Cold War spy novels.

I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.

Turns out, you can take the girl out of the spy school, but you can never take the spy school out of the girl.

I've been called a spy of Israel since 1996, and since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy.

It is illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans and an affront to our Republic to spy on the Senate.

I love the spy genre.

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters.

I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

I spy with my little eye a great story.

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.

What's great about 'Spy Hunter' is that we have an amazing title, an awesome car, and a great theme song, and we can use that to launch a new franchise that hopefully will compete with the other ones but just be kind of the more fun, video game version of a spy movie.

Life is a struggle and a good spy gets in there and fights.

I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with ... G." "Sausages.

Even through the hollow eyes of death I spy life peering.

The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy. Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.

I was Gerti Giggles in 'Spy Kids.'

My wife has a small part in 'Spy,' and that movie killed me repeatedly.

I've always enjoyed disappearing into a crowd in New York. As an actor, I love to spy, and it's hard to be a good spy if everyone is looking at you. Also, I'm pretty shy. I don't really like a lot of attention.

Experts say that Britain and France have strong spy agencies; Germany's is competent but afraid to level with its public; the rest are relatively weak, and there is no Europe-wide spy agency.

I think in some ways what Snowden is, is he's a mix of a cold war spy novel and post-9/11 spy novel.

The U.S. obviously has all the evidence they need to prosecute bankers. They just need to search their own spy database and then there you go - 1,000 bankers in jail, a trillion dollars in fines. But it doesn't happen. Instead, the spy network is being used to fight a copyright case. They used Prism to spy on me.

I invented the historical spy novel.

According to The Washington Post, the NSA has been monitoring phone calls and emails of people in Mexico. So apparently it's not enough to spy on American citizens, they feel they have to spy on FUTURE American citizens as well.

How can it be a spy satellite if they announce on television that it's a spy satellite?

We can't spy on them if they aren't spying on us, now can we?" Warped logic, but okay.

It is important to note that Edward Snowden was labeled as a spy not a whistle-blower - even though he exposed the reach of the spy services into the lives of most Americans. More importantly, he was denounced as being part of a generation that unfortunately combined being educated with a distrust of authority.

Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a spy detective or a rock star.

The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become double agents and available for our service. It is through the information brought by the double agent that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

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

I'm not a spy, which is the real question

I'm almost incapable of lying. I'd be a terrible spy.

Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

I've always loved spy stories. Who can resist?

I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel.

I'd rather live in a world where firms don't have these enormous incentives to spy on individuals.

I had no ambition to be a football coach. I wanted to be a spy for MI5 or MI6.

The Bond situations to me are so ridiculous, so outrageous. I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy, and yet everybody knows he's a spy.

I always loved the idea of a spy movie and part of it came from my personal love of spy movies. It started when I was growing up as a little kid in the 60s.

'Atomic Blonde' is about the characters' bigger existential crisis and their world. It's not so much the conceit of the spy game; it's more that being a spy sucks. But we're going to make it fun to watch.

The spy genre is something I loved.It also extends to the bad guy because I think, to me, what I love the most about the spy genre is when you have a great bad guy. What makes a great bad guy, to me, is the logic. What he's about has to make sense to me, that if I was in his shoes, yeah, right, that makes sense.

However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it.

I always wanted to play characters, and that was definitely one - a Russian spy.

If I wanted to make spy movies for the rest of my life, that would be one thing, but I don't want to just make spy movies.

The Spy Act prohibits keystroke logging, hijacking, and phishing.

It was awesome and liberating to play a Russian spy.

The fact that other countries spy on their own people or spy on each other does not address the fact that the US is engaged in massive, bulk collection to the tune of 70.3 million telecommunications a month in France of perfectly innocent people. That has nothing to do with protecting the United States, and has nothing to do with really gathering any kind of meaningful intelligence on France. It is an overreach ... and I think the other countries are justifiably outraged .... As one of our founders said: Those who choose between liberty and security deserve neither.

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

Setting people to spy on one another is not the way to protect freedom.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

'A Spy in the House', the first of Y. S. Lee's 'The Agency' novels, is pure confection, an historical romp through England at the height of The Great Stink that imagines a secret spy ring for women tucked away where few notice but powerful factions clamor for their services.

I had such a good time working with Paul Feig on 'Spy.'

To get a FISA warrant to spy on a suspected spy, the feds go before a super-secret court located in a sealed room in the Department of Justice. With no defense lawyers present, they need only show probable cause that the target is an 'agent of a foreign power' engaged in intelligence gathering against the United States.

Our mobile phones have become the greatest spy on the planet.