The use of the polygraph has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes.

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

The betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo.

The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.

Fire and water, logic and reason—those footholds of reality that you mortals hold so near and dear become like so much mist on the plains of the dreamscape.

The real funny thing is, whether the demons exist or not at all in your life, it's nothing to do whether you believe or not to one, none nor both of them.

I can stand what I know. It's what I don't know that frightens me.

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through.

Quiet down, we don't want to wake the Russians.

Rock music will never die. We all know that.

True individuality can be lonely.

Movie music is noise. It's even more painful than my sciatica.

I am healthy. I wish all my colleagues to the peace process to be healthy.