Secret Agent Quotes:

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.

- Sun Tzu

source: "The Art of War". Book by Sun Tzu (Chapter XIII: Intelligence and Espionage), 5th century BC.

topic: Army, Secret, Agents, Confidential, Secret Agent

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

- Thornton Wilder

topic: Secret, Acting, Actors, Secret Agent

Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

- Quentin Crisp

topic: Thinking, People, Secret, Forbearance, Constructive Criticism

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

- Joseph Conrad

source: Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad: 20 Novels & 26 Short Stories (Including Memoirs, Essays & Letters in One Single Edition): Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists: Heart of Darkness, The Duel, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2018, e-artnow

topic: Luxury, Opulence, Firsts, Secret Agent

He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.

- Ian Fleming

source: Ian Fleming (1953). “Casino Royale”, Cape. J.

topic: Secret, Alive, Details, Secret Agent

He who is not sage and wise, humane and just, cannot use secret agent.s. And he who is not delicate and subtle cannot get the truth out of them.

- Sun Tzu

topic: Wise, Secret, Use, Secret Agent

This week the Obama administration warned China to remove its secret agents from the U.S. Then in the middle of Obama's announcement a plant behind him got up and walked away.

- Jimmy Fallon

topic: Secret, Agents, Administration, Secret Agent

What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.

- Horace Walpole

topic: Believe, Men, Order, Secret Agent

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

- David Byrne

topic: Secret, Agents, Astronaut, Secret Agent

ALPHA-60: Your name is written "Ivan Johnson," but it is pronounced "Lemmy Caution," Secret Agent Zero Zero Three of the Outlands. You are a threat to the security of Alphaville. CAUTION: I refuse to become what you call "normal." ... ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked. CAUTION: Try to stop me, pal.

- Jean-Luc Godard

topic: Zero, Names, Doors, Alphas, Secret Agent

Bulk collection means all of your communications are being secretly intercepted. They are being stolen as they cross India, and they're being stored in these silos so that they can be rifled through at the convenience of secret agents, basically.

- Edward Snowden

source: Source: www.nesta.org.uk

topic: Communication, Mean, Secret, Secret Agent

Of all rewards none [is] more liberal than those given to secret agents.

- Sun Tzu

topic: Secret, Agents, Rewards, Confidential, Secret Agent

I'd be a terrible secret agent. I can't keep a secret and I'm not sneaky.

- Katherine Heigl

topic: Secret, Agents, Sneaky, Secret Agent

There's a big part of me that would love to be a secret agent. But if I showed up to do an investigation and interrogate someone now, they wouldn't be able to take me seriously. I've ruined that for myself.

- Gillian Anderson

source: "X-Files Archive: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in conversation". Interview with Nick De Semlyen, www.empireonline.com. August, 2008.

topic: Secret, Agents, Able, Secret Agent

I have dashed across continents and oceans as a fugitive and have matched my wits with the police and secret agents seeking to deprive me of one of the greatest blessings man can have-liberty.

- Jack Johnson

source: Jack Johnson (1969). “Jack Johnson is a dandy: an autobiography”

topic: Ocean, Men, Blessing, Matched, Greatest Blessings

The state in the matter of drugs should not, any more than in the matter of sex, act as the secret agent for the agenda of the church.

- Terence McKenna

topic: Sex, Drug, Secret, Secret Agent

I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to be a secret agent. I wanted to be a fireman and a doctor, all that. So I related that through movies and stuff.

- Josh Holloway

topic: Doctors, Firefighter, Secret, Fireman, Secret Agent

Everything was fine, but Weetzie wanted a baby. “How could you want one?” My Secret Agent Lover Man said. “There are way too many babies. And diseases. And nuclear accidents. And crazy psychos. We cant have a baby,” he said.

- Francesca Lia Block

source: Francesca Lia Block (2009). “Dangerous Angels: Five Weetzie Bat Books”, p.31, Harper Collins

topic: Baby, Crazy, Men, Secret Agent

[The biographer] must be as ruthless as a board meeting smelling out embezzlement, as suspicious as a secret agent riding the Simplon-Orient Express, as cold-eyed as a pawnbroker viewing a leaky concertina.

- Paul Murray Kendall

topic: Secret, Boards, Agents, Embezzlement, Board Meetings

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

- Neil Gaiman

topic: Men, Two, Ducks, Good Omens, Omen

The field (of filmmaking) is suddenly sexy, ... so it's deluged with these wannabes who say 'I don't want to be a secret agent, I'll be a filmmaker.' I think a lot of people are really kind of naive.

- John Landis

topic: Sexy, Thinking, People, Wannabes, Secret Agent

W.Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin. He began publication of an expensive magazine and proclaimed 'a thousand secret agents in a thousand communities.'

- Samuel Gompers

topic: Party, Community, Secret, Communist Party, Secret Agent