Secretive Quotes

• Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

  Leonard Michaels

  Cat, Animal, Shy

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• Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Smart, Men, Generous Man

  A Miscellany of Men "The Miser and His Friends" (1912)

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• A person may be very secretive and yet have no secrets.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Secret, May, Persons

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• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Funny, Hilarious, 4th Of July

  Poor Richard's Almanac for 1735 and 1741.

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• Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.

  Helen Thomas

  Thinking, White, House

  Phone interview on "The Majority Report" with Sam Seder, April 2, 2004.

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• To be reserved, secretive, with a passionate violence that causes suffering.

  Gwen John

  Suffering, Passionate, Violence

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• Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Women, Literature, Holmes

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.21

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• The theory for admitting accomplice testimony that is uncorroborated is that conspiracy is by its nature secretive and that only the parties to it can know it occurred. But in practice this means the accomplice's guilt is modified to the degree that he can convict the defendant.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Party, Mean, Practice

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• I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Solitude

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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• First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value.

  Ron Paul

  Money, Creating, Air

  YouTube Channel "voytechs"/"MSBNC - Ron Paul the fed caused the bubble", www.youtube.com. March 20, 2008.

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• I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Lying, Want

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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• Smooth and ordered on the outside; roiling and chaotic and desperately secretive underneath, but not noticeably so, never noticeably so.

  Caroline Knapp

  Smooth, Chaotic

  Caroline Knapp (1999). “Drinking: A Love Story”, p.11, Dial Press

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• Lead the least secretive life you can.

  Susan Shapiro

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• People are secretive when they have secrets.

  Deb Caletti

  People, Secret

  Deb Caletti (2010). “The Secret Life of Prince Charming”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

  Agatha Christie

  Dog, Book, Writing

  Agatha Christie (1991). “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• There are two ways of confronting the country's problems.One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law. The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism.

  Mir-Hossein Mousavi

  Country, Law, Play

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• Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family.

  Ian Kershaw

  Backgrounds, Personal Life

  Ian Kershaw (1998). “Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris”

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• Why were my visitors so secretive, hiding themselves behind my consciousness. I could only conclude that they were using me and did not want me to know why...What if they were dangerous? Then I was terribly dangerous because I was playing a role in acclimatizing people to them.

  Whitley Strieber

  People, What If, Want

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• But there's a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I'm not a secretive person.

  Andrew Scott

  Differences, Privacy, Secrecy

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.

  Thomas Szasz

  Strong, Sex, Powerful

  The Second Sin "Sex" (1973)

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• In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive... Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen.

  Keith Bradsher

  Money, Powerful, Lying

  "INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; Obscure Global Bank Moves Into the Light". www.nytimes.com. August 5, 1995.

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• I was as secretive - indeed, as furtive - as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.

  Frank A. Vanderlip

  Discovery, Effort, Historical

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• You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Typewriters, Trying

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• Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.

  John Cowper Powys

  Men, Creative, Overcoming

  "The Meaning of Culture". Book by John Cowper Powys (p. 222), 1929.

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• The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly.

  Paul Theroux

  Order, Class, People

  Paul Theroux (2006). “The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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