Pretence Quotes - Page 4

• That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.

  Jim Morrison

  Famous Love, Being Yourself, True Friend

  "Jim Morrison: Ten Years Gone". "Creem Magazine" Interview with Lizzie James, 1981.

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• Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  People, Giving, Knavery

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• In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.

  John Locke

  Faith, Ideas, Judging

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.530

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• The job of an actor is disclosure, not pretence!

  Max Reinhardt

  Jobs, Actors, Disclosure

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• Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretence and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer.

  Walter Guido Vincenti

  Art, Mean, Engineering

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• I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.

  Walter Lippmann

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Walter Lippmann “Force and Ideas: The Early Writings”, Transaction Publishers

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• Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Long, Age

  'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1706)

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• All zeal for a reform, that gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence.

  William Cowper

  Giving, Reform, Charity

  William Cowper (1872). “Table talk, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, and other poems”, p.108

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• In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.

  Ai Weiwei

  Passion, Independent, Rights

  "Ai Weiwei: 'China's art world does not exist'". www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2012.

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• Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Christian, Character, Men

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1873). “The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.138

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• Fish is held out to be one of the greatest luxuries of the table and not only necessary, but even indispensable at all dinners where there is any pretence of excellence or fashion.

  Isabella Beeton

  Fashion, Luxury, Excellence

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• THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Discovery, Topics

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.79

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• True honour is an attachment to honest and beneficent principles, and a good reputation; and prompts a man to do good to others, and indeed to all men, at his own cost, pains, or peril. False honour is a pretence to this character, but does things that destroy it: And the abuse of honour is called honour, by those who from that good word borrow credit to act basely, rashly, or foolishly.

  Thomas Gordon

  Pain, Character, Men

  "Cato's Letter" No. 57, Of false Honour, publick and private, December 16, 1721.

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• After Mengistu consolidated his power in 1978, his personality gradually began to change. His ability to listen and his patience faded away. We could now see these qualities were pretences only; he had been putting on his best behavior in his bid for support.

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  Personality, Support, Quality

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• I am convinced that those societies (such as the Native American peoples) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Native American, Sheep, Government

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• Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice and such-like enormities, which (according to the Apostle) manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people?

  John Locke

  Christian, Kindness, Men

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• . . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

  John Adams

  Religious, Father, Rights

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.293

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• Certainly each side - the 'absolutists' and the 'constructivists' or 'humanists', as I've labelled them - accuses the other of hubris, and lays claim to humility. I see hubris on both sides: a pretence that we could ascend to an objective account of the world, on the one hand, and a pretence that we have the resources to live and act without a sense of there being something to which we answerable, on the other. So both sides are 'villains'.

  David E. Cooper

  Humility, Hands, World

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear.

  Upton Sinclair

  Apology, Thinking, Insult To Injury

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• Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

  Orson Scott Card

  Children, Book, Giving

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• Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

  Joseph Conrad

  Memories, Passion, Vanity

  Joseph Conrad (2005). “Selected Works of Joseph Conrad”, p.225, Wordsworth Editions

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• All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

  Charles Dickens

  Self, Words Of Wisdom, Crowns

  Charles Dickens (1881). “Great Expectations”, p.254

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• If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.

  Thomas Paine

  Ocean, Thinking, Reflection

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• As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Freedom, Taken

  Letter to Joshua F. Speed, 24 Aug. 1855

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• Abortion is the only event that modern liberals think too violent and obscene to portray on TV. This is not because they are squeamish or prudish. It is because if people knew what Abortion really looked like, it would destroy their pretence that it is a civilized answer to the problem of what to do about unwanted babies.

  Peter Hitchens

  Baby, Thinking, People

  "A calamity for women... just as the doctor predicted" by Peter Hitchens, www.dailymail.co.uk. October 27, 2007.

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