Secret societies have fascinated people for centuries. From political clubs to religious brotherhoods, from elite groups to underground movements, these organizations have shaped culture, history, and myth. Were they real groups operating behind closed doors or symbolic ideas used to explain power, their influence has always led to curiosity.
- “The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society.”
John F. Kennedy - “A secret society exists to protect secrets. That is its very essence.”
Umberto Eco - “Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
Benjamin Franklin - “Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far behind.”
Samuel Johnson - “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Benjamin Disraeli - “Secret societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the world began.”
Manly P. Hall - “Secrecy is the enemy of efficiency, but it is the ally of power.”
Peter Drucker - “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
Lao Tzu - “The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there is none.”
Sir William Scott - “Nothing is so burdensome as a secret.”
Jean de La Fontaine - “A secret is too little for one, enough for two, too much for three.”
Portuguese proverb - “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
George Orwell - “Secrecy breeds tyranny.”
Robert Heinlein - “The possession of secrets is a badge of power.”
Frank Herbert - “To keep your secret is wisdom. But to expect others to keep it is folly.”
Samuel Johnson - “The man who cannot keep a secret is not a man to be trusted.”
Thomas Carlyle - “Nothing improves memory so much as the desire to forget a secret.”
Michel de Montaigne - “All secrets are deep.”
William S. Burroughs - “Where there are secrets, suspicion follows.”
Sophocles - “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”
Stephen Hawking - “Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”
Honoré de Balzac - “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.”
Francis Bacon - “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny lies in keeping them ignorant.”
Maximilien Robespierre - “All warfare is based on deception.”
Sun Tzu - “The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non obvious.”
Marcus Aurelius - “Secrets are the currency of power.”
Lois McMaster Bujold - “The best way to penetrate a secret society is to create one of your own.”
Charles Bukowski - “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.”
Jim Morrison - “Knowledge is power.”
Francis Bacon - “In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”
Erasmus - “Mystery creates wonder. Wonder is the basis of the desire to understand.”
Neil Armstrong - “To keep a secret, you must never reveal that a secret exists.”
Edgar Allan Poe - “The world loves to be deceived.”
Girolamo Savonarola - “He who controls others may be powerful. He who controls himself is mightier still.”
Lao Tzu - “Every thing secret degenerates.”
Lord Acton - “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde - “Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of state.”
Cardinal Richelieu - “Men are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.”
Epictetus - “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
George Bernard Shaw - “It is not power that corrupts, but fear.”
Aung San Suu Kyi - “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
Mark Twain - “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - “The most powerful forces are often invisible.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson - “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
James A. Garfield - “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”
Khalil Gibran - “The greatest secrets are hidden in the most unlikely places.”
Roald Dahl - “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust - “We are more easily deceived by our own lies than by those of others.”
François de La Rochefoucauld - “Fear is the foundation of most governments.”
John Adams - “Where the mystery is the greatest, the truth is often the simplest.”
Arthur Conan Doyle - “The biggest conspiracy is that people think they have no power.”
Zig Ziglar - “Truth is often the first casualty of power.”
Henry A. Wallace - “The most dangerous secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche - “The wise man knows he does not know.”
Socrates - “People love secrets. They love knowing that someone knows something they do not.”
Dan Brown - “Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. Transparency is the beginning of freedom.”
Julian Assange - “A half truth is a whole lie.”
Yiddish proverb - “He who becomes master of a secret becomes master of the world.”
Alexandre Dumas - “There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”
The Bible - “No lie can live forever.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Secret societies have always stood at the crossroads of fear and fascination. The quotes above reveal how secrecy can influence governments, shape ideas, and spark imaginations across generations. In a world where knowledge is shared faster than ever, the mystery surrounding hidden groups continues to endure. Their allure remains strong because secrecy itself remains one of humanity’s oldest and most powerful tools.
