Disingenuous Quotes

• I felt devalued and disrespected. The energy behind it felt disingenuous and motivated by corporate profit.

  Lisa Bonet

  Energy, Disrespectful, Motivated

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• While it is clear that we need to make some adjustments to protect Social Security for the long term, it is disingenuous to say that the trust fund is facing a crisis

  Carl Levin

  Long, Needs, Social

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• Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'

  Dick Wolf

  Successful, Risk, Loser

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• At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

  Richard Russo

  Writing, Thinking, Risk

  "Failbetter" Interview, www.failbetter.com.

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• …maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith

  Zadie Smith

  Self, Fake, Friendly

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• The gift of willingness is the only thing that stands between the quiet desperation of a disingenuous life and the actualization of unexpressed potential.

  Jim McDonald

  Fear, Inner Peace, Quiet

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• It is hard to get mad at Donald Trump for saying stupid things, in the same way you don't get mad at a monkey when he throws poop at you at the zoo... What does get me angry is the ridiculous, disingenuous defending of the poop-throwing monkey.

  Jon Stewart

  Zoos, Stupid, Mad

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• No one that has ever been in combat ever wants to see war anywhere in the world. It is horrible. It's horrible looking at the pock-marked walls. It's horrible looking at the flesh embedded on walls in Bosnia. It was horrible looking and interviewing and talking to the kids who lost their parents, because Saddam Hussein decided to feed their parents to the lions in downtown Baghdad. To characterize particularly myself, but other groups, as wanting to advocate a war I think is not only disingenuous, I think it's a patent falsehood intentionally created to stigmatize a group of people.

  Matt Shea

  Inspiring, Wall, War

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• There's the disingenuous duplicitousness, but you can apply that to every politician, really.

  David Cross

  Politician

  "David Cross on why his comedy tour pissed off people right and left". Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. August 18, 2016.

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• There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Clever, Real, Thinking

  Interview with Joshua Wolf Shenk, www.motherjones.com. May 2005.

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• Southern women see no point in the hard way. Life is hard enough. So we add a little sugar to the sour. Which is not to suggest Southern women are disingenuous cream puffs. Quite the opposite. When you are born into a history as loaded as the South’s, when you carry in your bones the incontrovertible knowledge of man’s violence and limitations, daring to stay sweet is about the most radical thing you can do.

  Allison Glock

  Sweet, Men, Opposites

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• The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

  Daniel Dennett

  Gratitude, Blessing, Ideas

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• It's a dangerous game to write a song for a person you don't know. It feels disingenuous.

  Andy Biersack

  Song, Writing, Games

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• It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest that he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states.

  Martin Luther King III

  Father, Party, Florida

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• There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Loss, Skills, Ideas

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.135, Courier Corporation

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• I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes. I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes...? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner.

  Errol Morris

  Hero, Opportunity, Long Ago

  "Greasing the Ad Engine: Errol Morris". Sandy Hunter, Boards Magazine, August 1, 2000.

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• I find it more than a little disingenuous to act as if keeping slaves was something that set Thomas Jefferson apart from all mankind.

  Annette Gordon-Reed

  Littles, Mankind, Ifs

  "Amazon.com Review: Questions for Annette Gordon-Reed". www.amazon.com.

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• It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Baby, Reality, Vegetarianism

  "Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture". Book by Jeremy Rifkin, 1992.

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• To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse, 10 times as ignorant, 10 times as unfair and tyrannical, 10 times as complaisant and pusillanimous, and 10 times as devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, pharisaical, Pecksniffian, fraudulent, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd and dishonest.

  H. L. Mencken

  Average, Ignorant, Belief

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• These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are ... something else entirely.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Real, Thinking, People

  "The Markup Wars". www.jwz.org. 2003.

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• I really believe that when you're playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I'm pulling from things from my own life, then I think I'm being disingenuous to the character and the story.

  Walton Goggins

  Believe, Character, Thinking

  Interview with Logan Hill, www.gq.com. May 31, 2012.

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• I've interfaced with a lot of other creators of serialized shows, and I've really been blown away by the fact that they create a big spectacle, at the beginning, in the pilot, and they don't ultimately know where they're going. That's terrifying to me, and creatively disingenuous.

  Paul Scheuring

  Pilots, Facts, Bigs

  "ZERO HOUR Executive Producers Paul Scheuring, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Zack Estrin and Dan McDermott Talk About the New ABC Drama". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 14, 2013.

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• It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, World, Violence

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• Perhaps the most important reason to be skeptical of government inflation numbers is that the government, like a fox campaigning to guard a hen house, has many reasons to be disingenuous. As the world's largest debtor, the Federal Government is inflation's primary beneficiary.

  Peter Schiff

  Government, Numbers, House

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• It would be weird for me to be raging against all of the bullies in my life because it would be disingenuous. I've gotten through all of that and I'm living a wonderful life, but that doesn't mean that people aren't mean to me.

  Andy Biersack

  Mean, People, Bully

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