Success Quote by Paul Getty

Nothing sounds more like a man trying not to marry Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis than a man publicly announcing he has “absolutely no intention” of marrying her. The line is less a denial than a defensive press release, delivered in the crisp, corporate register of someone used to treating private life as reputational exposure. Getty doesn’t say “I’m not marrying her.” He says “I have no intention,” as if matrimony were a hostile takeover he’s declining for strategic reasons.

The context does most of the work. Jackie O wasn’t just a famous widow; she was a living symbol with gravitational pull: glamour, tragedy, political mythology, and tabloid oxygen. To be rumored as her next husband meant instant narrative capture. For a businessman, especially one whose wealth made him legible to the public as a kind of walking balance sheet, the suspicion would be transactional: Is this romance, social climbing, brand-building, or leverage?

“Absolutely” is the tell. It’s the word you use when you’re negotiating with an audience, not a partner. Getty is signaling to gatekeepers - family, shareholders, society pages - that he won’t be annexed into Camelot’s afterlife. The subtext is anxiety about being re-cast: less titan of capital, more accessory in someone else’s legend.

What makes the quote work is its accidental comedy. It’s an attempt to shut down a story that, by the mere act of rebuttal, gets louder. Denials like this don’t erase rumors; they launder them into permanence.