Pretentious Quotes - Page 2

• I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.

  Lou Reed

  Art, Thinking, Ego

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• America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

  Goldwin Smith

  Ugly Things, America, Given

  Goldwin Smith (1881). “Lectures and Essays”, New York : Macmillan

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• Musicians always come off sounding a little bit pretentious, and a little bit... I don't know, hypocritical, from what they do, talking about strong issues.

  James Iha

  Strong, Talking, Issues

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• As refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his meal.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dream, Men, Artist

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.281, Courier Corporation

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• Certainly, anybody who says, "in the eyes of God," is pretentious.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Eye

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• I eat whatever I want. I like bread and cheese and wine, and that makes my life fun and enjoyable.

  Gwyneth Paltrow

  Fun, Wine, Want

  "The Real Gwyneth" by Justine Picardie, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 1, 2012.

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• The same people that always think I'm pretentious will think I'm pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.

  Bradford Cox

  Thinking, People, Relate

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• There is no mission, nor interest to convert, and yet I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter. We should see at once that the high ideals for which we are killing and regimenting each other are empty and abstract substiutes for the unheeded miracles that surround us - not only in the obvious wonders of nature but also in the overwhelming uncanny fact of mere existence.

  Alan Watts

  Laughter, Believe, Miracle

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• I'm not trying to influence anyone else; I'm not saying, "Do what I do." I think it's a little pretentious to say, "I'm a role model"; I would never say that, and I don't think of myself that way.

  Kim Kardashian

  Thinking, Role Models, Trying

  "Exclusive! Kim Kardashian West on Baby No. 2, Her New Style, and Life in the Spotlight". Interview with Alex Morris, www.glamour.com. June 1, 2015.

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• That sort of detailed filmmaking is one, hard to do and not have it be pretentious, and two, have it tell the story, which is what you're taught, that cinema is the language of images and you really should be able to make a film with no dialogue and tell a story.

  Nicole Kidman

  Two, Cinema, Stories

  "Park Chan Wook & Nicole Kidman Interview, Stoker". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. August 29th, 2018.

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• Film is a narrative format. Some fashion films try to retain some of the poetic mystery, but most of the time they only end up looking like some crappy, pretentious film-school thing. So I think the interest in film is really about the fashion world finding another form of expression.

  Johan Renck

  Fashion, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If I were pretentious I would say that I'm not an average person. But really, I know how that is.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Average, Persons, Know How

  "Karl Lagerfeld meets his match". Interview with Bruce LaBruce, www.theguardian.com. May 19, 2011.

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• People need realness, reality. People can sense when someone is being pretentious or fake. It's because you feel it; you see it in someone's body language.

  Afrojack

  Reality, People, Fake

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• What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Dull, Thieves, Clown

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Rum Diary: Film Tie-in Edition”, p.72, A&C Black

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• You live for pretentious metaphors.

  John Green

  Metaphor

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.51, Penguin

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• Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

  Jack Kerouac

  Jealous, Writing, Way

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?

  Julian Barnes

  Thought Provoking, Youth, Courses

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• I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence.

  Sam Amidon

  Powerful, Book, Knows

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

  John Milius

  Movie, Inspiring, Film

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. May 07, 2003.

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• I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn’t sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I’ll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I’m an actor… I love studying people.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Kings, Father, Hero

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• If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Self, Ideas, Sticks

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• One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is 'Libertarian.' People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable, and to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.

  George Carlin

  Philosophy, Thinking, Self

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Sometimes with pop music, you have to see it to love it. With soul music, it's sparse. There's nothing that's pretentious or planned. It's just so gutsy.

  Adele

  Soul, Sometimes, Pops

  "Heart & Soul" by Julie Vadnal, www.elle.com. February 24, 2011.

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• God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless attitude of ours in which we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious, busy haste, or even with shame. Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  God, Attitude, Holiday

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1954). “Life Togehter”

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• The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill....[The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century....Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature.

  Kevin Myers

  Thinking, Skills, Two

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