Pretext Quotes - Page 5

• Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.

  Gus Van Sant

  Fate, Ideas, Hysteria

  "Hooked: Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S". Book by Susan C. Boyd, 2010.

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• The source of Pyrrhonism comes from failing to distinguish between a demonstration, a proof and a probability. A demonstration supposes that the contradictory idea is impossible; a proof of fact is where all the reasons lead to belief, without there being any pretext for doubt; a probability is where the reasons for belief are stronger than those for doubting.

  Andrew Michael Ramsay

  Ideas, Doubt, Stronger

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• History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.

  Emile M. Cioran

  History, Mind, Degradation

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Lapses, Answers, Tongue

  Charlotte Brontë “Jane Eyre”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors.

  John Adams

  Real, Long, Liberty

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.11, Jazzybee Verlag

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• [Vladimir] Putin intended to provide for a broad safety corridor [for the Olympic Games]. That's why Abkhazia was a more important and desired goal of Russian aggression against Georgia than South Ossetia, which merely served as a pretext. Concerns mainly centered on the Crimea.

  Garry Kasparov

  Games, Safety, Goal

  Source: www.rferl.org

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• The US stole Texas from Mexico by violence, then invaded Mexico on ludicrous pretexts and conquered half of it, what is now the Southwest and Far West. That's why cities have Spanish names: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, etc. All of this is suppressed in standard American history. But the victims remember. The conquerors typically have one history, the victims a different one - and often a more accurate one.

  Noam Chomsky

  Texas, Cities, Names

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• The Andes region is not stable. So we can expect to see more US intervention. It could be under any kind of pretext. We can no longer use the Russians as an excuse, as we did in Central America in the 1980's, so drugs will have to do.

  Noam Chomsky

  America, Drug, Use

  Source: www.madre.org

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• Today, aid to Colombia is given under the pretext of a drug war. That's pretty hard to take seriously. Ten years ago, Amnesty International flatly called it a myth.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Years, Drug

  Source: www.madre.org

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• I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.

  Leon Trotsky

  Government, Lessons, October

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• [Censors are] people with secret attractions to various temptations... They are defending themselves under the pretext of defending others, because at heart they fear their own weaknesses.

  Ernest Jones

  Fear, Heart, People

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• National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people.

  John Taylor of Caroline

  Peace, War, People

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• To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

  Jon Jones

  Theory Of Evolution, Facts, Alternatives

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• We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indirect and apathetic.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Artist, Self, Hands

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• Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth.

  Thomas More

  Men, Names, Rich

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• I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hair, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.107, Bantam Classics

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• Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.

  Walt Whitman

  Government, Community, Intrusion

  Walt Whitman (1998). “The Journalism: 1834-1846”, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated

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• The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Thinking, Purpose, Lips

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• According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext.

  William S. Burroughs

  Letting Go, Dog, Boys

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• Human rights and international criminal law both illustrate the contradictory potential of international law. On one level, the imposition of human rights norms is a restraint on interventionary diplomacy, especially if coupled with respect for the legal norm of self-determination. But on another level, the protection of human rights creates a pretext for intervention as given approval by the UN Security Council in the form of the R2P (responsibility to protect) norm, as used in the 2011 Libyan intervention. The same applies with international criminal accountability.

  Richard A. Falk

  Determination, Responsibility, Self

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.

  Arthur Koestler

  Pertinent Questions, Society, Lasts

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• Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Glowing, Vitality, Desert

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• Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Religion, Crime, Thousand

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.103

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• A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

  John Stuart Mill

  Acting, Likes, Affair

  John Stuart Mill (1869). “On Liberty”, p.187

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• What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Believe, Motive

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense of Life”, p.261, Courier Corporation

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