Science Quote by Edward Teller

Secrecy doesn’t merely hide information; it rewires the incentives of everyone who touches it. Teller’s line works because it frames concealment not as a policy choice but as a habit-forming drug: once you’ve tasted the power of deciding who knows what, you start needing bigger doses. The word “accepted” is the quiet trigger here. Secrecy isn’t imposed only from above; it becomes normal through consent, careerism, and the reassuring story that “serious” work must be shielded from the unserious public. Teller is pointing at the slippery moment when a temporary security measure hardens into an institutional personality.

Coming from a physicist who lived at the center of the atomic age, the context is loaded. Teller helped build the U.S. nuclear arsenal, argued aggressively for the hydrogen bomb, and spent decades in a world where classification wasn’t ancillary but foundational. In that ecosystem, secrecy functions as currency: it confers status, justifies budgets, and simplifies moral complexity by moving debate behind locked doors. The subtext reads like a warning from inside the vault. The addiction isn’t only personal; it’s bureaucratic. Classified programs reproduce themselves because secrecy reduces accountability, and reduced accountability makes risk and overreach easier.

The line also carries a faint self-indictment. If secrecy becomes addiction, then “national security” can become a cover story for comfort: fewer questions, fewer critics, fewer democratic frictions. Teller’s genius here is the clinical metaphor, implying withdrawal is painful, and recovery requires more than good intentions. It requires sunlight, and a public willing to demand it.