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Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.

— Henry L. Stimson

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Source, in full

reported in Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (1948), p. 188; David Kahn, The Codebreakers (1967), p. 360. This was Stimson's justification for closing the Department of State's code-breaking office, the so-called Black Chamber, in 1929.

More quotes by Henry L. Stimson

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.

The only deadly sin I know is cynicism.

On Active Service in Peace and War (1948)

The latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system.

I am confident that you will agree with me that Gen. Eisenhower's decision, under these difficult circumstances, was right and proper.

The decision to weigh Lieut. Gen. Patton's great services to his country, in World War I and World War II, from these shores to Casablanca and through Tunisia to triumph in Sicily, on the one hand, against an indefensible act on the other, was Gen. Eisenhower's.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry L. Stimson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.