Pretext Quotes - Page 6

• Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins.

  Jean-Francois Cope

  Color, Cities, Racism

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• The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Deceit, Our Actions

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.62

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• Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Vanity, Giving, May

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• [T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  War, Reality, Average

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• The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Sad, Unhappy, Usual

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• Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.

  Randal Marlin

  Democracies Have, Democracy, Action

  Randal Marlin (2002). “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion”, p.45, Broadview Press

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• There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Responsibility, Decision, Weight

  "Addicted to Addicts" by Theodore Dalrymple, www.city-journal.org. 1999.

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• Behind my non-cooperation there is always the keenest desire to cooperate on the slightest pretext even with the worst of opponents. To me, a very imperfect mortal, ever in need of God's grace, no one is beyond redemption.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Grace, Desire, Needs

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• There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Cheating, Writing, Two

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Art of Literature: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.6, 谷月社

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• By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.

  Paul Gauguin

  Real, Taken, Color

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• It's not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam - actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.

  Bashar al-Assad

  Religious, War, Islam

  Source: legrandsoir.info

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• The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses.

  William S. Burroughs

  War, Police, Drug

  Source: www.litkicks.com

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• To large numbers of American citizens life in certain parts of the country becomes intolerably hazardous. They may be seized on any pretext, however flimsy, and put to death with horrible tortures. No government pretending to be civilized can go on condoning such atrocities. Either it must make every possible effort to put them down or it must suffer the scorn and contempt of Christendom.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Government, Lynching

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• [Terrorism] is formed of certain fundamental problems, [including] ignorance, poverty, and fear of others. Some people take advantage of the young and foolish. They are manipulated, abused, and even drugged to such an extent that they can be used as murderers on the pretext of some crazy ideals or goals.

  Fethullah Gulen

  Crazy, Ignorance, People

  "Meet Fethullah Gülen, the World’s Top Public Intellectual". Foreign Policy Interview, foreignpolicy.com. August 4, 2008.

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• It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Action, Controversial

  Noam Chomsky (2007). “Interventions”, p.71, City Lights Publishers

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• In 1856...I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years.... I therefore voted for James Buchanan as President.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Country, War, Men

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• Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.

  Lord Acton

  Strong, Ignorance, Men

  "The History of Freedom in Antiquity". Lord Acton's opening statement of his speech on February 28, 1877; later quoted in "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, 1907.

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• I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Exhibitions, Aversion

  Source: collider.com

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• Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Play, Rights, Perspective

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• If we set out with... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary,... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Sports, Party, Blessing

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• In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts.

  Alexander Cockburn

  Crush, Black, Panthers

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• The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, War, Names

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• Mine was a trained Presbyterian conscience and knew but the one duty - to hunt and harry its slave upon all pretexts and on all occasions, particularly when there was no sense nor reason in it.

  Mark Twain

  Atheism, Slave, Reason

  Mark Twain (2010). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.158, Univ of California Press

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• I dislike The Exorcist, and I found it a warning sign of the dangers in a furious cinematic talent putting the audience through it (a Hitchcock phrase) without purpose, or without the nagging moral anxiety that activated Hitch. You see, I don't think William Friedkin believes in the Devil, or cares about him. I think he found exorcism a pretext for a gross-out and he calculated there was an audience for it, or a crowd ready to be challenged. Maybe I'm too much of an atheist to stand religion being so thrashed.

  Edward Jay Epstein

  Atheist, Believe, Thinking

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• There is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.

  Mark Twain

  Sunday, America, Issues

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.155, 谷月社

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