A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby And The Great Betrayal Quotes
"One does not look twice at an offer of enrolment in an elite force."
"I was certain that my life and myself interested him not so much professionally as on a human level."
"I felt that immediately. The first thing you noticed about him were his eyes."
"He looked at you as if nothing more important in life than you and talking to you existed at that moment."
"Both of them were intelligent and experienced professionals, as well as genuinely very good people."
"I sometimes felt we had been friends since childhood."
"I left the university with the conviction that my life must be devoted to communism."
"Serious drinkers should never take exercise or make sudden or violent movements."
"He had an ability to inspire loyalty and affection."
"He works with great willingness and always knows what might be of interest to us."
"An inspirational figure, a true comrade and idealist."
"If they don’t kill me there, they will kill me here. Better to die there."
"I had been told in pressing terms by my Soviet friends that my first priority must be the British secret service."
"Secrets are the currency of intelligence work."
"Luck played an enormous role in my life, but you have to know how to use luck."
"The capacity for friendship is a particularly important characteristic in an intelligence officer."
"In the insanely distrustful world of Soviet espionage, the quality, quantity, and consistency of this information rendered it suspect."
"Philby considered him a prime specimen of the doomed ruling-class elite."
"The entire work of the Abwehr station has been exposed and its continuation seems impracticable."
"Communists and communism are vile. It is the duty of all members of the service to stamp upon them at every possible opportunity."
"Not one of them volunteered to stay in position and risk his neck for 'freedom'. One and all, they cut and ran for safety."
"Every evening, Philby took home a ‘fat briefcase’, and sat in his study laboriously copying out files."
"Was it freedom they sought, or the fleshpots?"
"I began to feel that I would enjoy my first transatlantic crossing."
"Who gained most from this complex game I cannot say."
"By cultivating me to the full, he could better keep me under wraps."
"The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on murder, sabotage and assassination."
"Philby was privy to a hell of a lot beyond what he should have known."
"Philby’s life could not have been organised more pleasantly."
"The more visitors I had in Washington, the more spies I got my finger into."
"The genuine mental block which stubbornly resisted the belief that respected members of the establishment could do such things."
"Despite all appearances, I thought my chances were good."
"It is entirely contrary to the English tradition for a man to have to prove his innocence."
"Intelligence services do silly things sometimes."
"It is the spy who has been called on to remedy the situation created by the deficiencies of ministers, diplomats, generals, and priests."
"We do not have to develop, like Parliamentarians conditioned by a lifetime, the ability to produce the ready phrase, the smart reply and the flashing smile."
"I would have given a great deal to have glimpsed his summing up."
"If pop music is going to be used to destroy our established institutions, then it must be destroyed first."
"I have never tasted better, even in Strasbourg."
"We are relatively free of the problems of status, of precedence, departmental attitudes and evasions of personal responsibility, which create the official cast of mind."
"The efficiency of our security services can only be reduced by publicity given to their organisation, personnel and techniques."
"The line between Philby’s two occupations was blurred from the outset."
"Some men like to parade their knowledge. Others revel in the possession of information that they decline to share."
"For an alcoholic has already become divorced from his or her real self, hooked on an artificial reality."
"The truth was simpler, as it almost always is: Philby was spying on everyone, and no one was spying on him."
"Spies, even more than most people, invent the past to cover up mistakes."
"In the course of conversation, Elliott drew me aside and said he was glad I happened to be there."
"Kim’s appearance had strikingly deteriorated since I had last seen him."
"And there is little doubt that Blake’s arrest and his savage forty-two-year prison sentence precipitated Kim’s further decline."
"Friendship is the most important thing of all."
"I wouldn’t talk to you the way you’re talking to me."
"I’m certain that you were in the same situation in politics: you loved England and the Soviet Union at the same time."
"You took me in for years. Now I’ll get the truth out of you even if I have to drag it out."
"I had not volunteered information as every public statement had pointed to his innocence."
"What a pity we shall never be able to gather à trois at Pruniers!"
"I am more than thankful for your friendly interventions at all times."
"If you only knew what hell it is when your political convictions clash with your personal affections."
"I wasn’t laughing at them. I have always operated on two levels, a personal level and a political one."
"What is more important in your life, me and the children, or the Communist Party?"
"After the break up of the Soviet Union, he correctly predicted the emergence of an authoritarian government in Russia."
"He foresaw the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of Iranian aggression, and the growing economic and political clout of China."
"Post-imperial Britain was ‘showing a quite unjustified lack of self-confidence’."
"He came to see the way he had been duped not as a mark of shame, but as a badge of honour."
"Inwardly he must have been cold, calculating and cruel – traits which he cleverly concealed from his friends and colleagues."
"He missed the spark that had drawn him to Philby on the very first day they met in 1940. ‘He had charm to burn,’ he wrote, with a reluctant wistfulness."
"‘God, it would be good to be a fake somebody, rather than a real nobody’."
"He looked like a P. G. Wodehouse man-about-town, and spoke like one."
"His waistcoats curved inwards, never outwards."
"Terrific charmer, with an impulse to shock. I knew Philby terribly well, specially the family. I really cared for them."
"My interrogation of Philby lasted a long time. The one in Beirut was the end of a series."
"He’s a totally sad man, dreaming of a cottage in Sussex with roses around the door."
"Betrayal takes courage. You have to hand it to Philby too. He had courage."
"I mean how could you crack up Penkovsky to be a hero?"
"These marvellous belly-laughs. I mean how could you not live for them?"
"I have always operated on two levels, a personal level and a political one. When the two have come into conflict I have had to put politics first."
"thunderstruck, but by no means disapproving."
"a proficient, clever and determined officer."