Pretense Quotes - Page 3

• Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Lying, Equality, Hype

  "The Red Association" by Mikhail Bakunin, www.marxists.org. 1870.

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• ‎We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Running, Caring, Government

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• Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow.

  Stephen Schwartz

  Self, Wicked, Excuse

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• To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense

  Charles Churchill

  Want, Faults, Fame

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• There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  School, Sincere

  "Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue". Book by Miguel de Unamuno, 1920.

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• Anything created with fake intention or pretense cannot last long.

  Henry Chang

  Honesty, Long, Fake

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• Once you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything.

  Mary Jo Putney

  Fake, Sincerity, Best House

  Mary Jo Putney (2002). “The Spiral Path”, Center Point Pub

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• The world is not looking for Stepford-type Christians. People are tired of pretense. We struggle with failures; we long for intimacy. So why are we feigning perfection before God and one another.

  Sheila Walsh

  Christian, Struggle, Tired

  Sheila Walsh (1999). “Life is Tough, But God is Faithful: How to See God's Love in Difficult Times”, p.1990, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Men, Thinking, Proud

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.312

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• Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing.

  Stella Benson

  Sometimes, Posing

  Stella Benson (1916). “I Pose”

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• 

  Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

  Jim Morrison

  Sex, Truth, Honesty

  "Into This House We're Born". Book by James Hunt, p. 262, July 1, 2006.

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• The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.

  Henry George

  Slave Owners, Special, Aristocracy

  Henry George (2006). “Protection Or Free Trade”, p.21, Cosimo, Inc.

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• To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own.

  Lionel Strachey

  Religious, Fear, Hate

  Lionel Strachey (1912). “The world's wit and humor: an encyclopedia of the classic wit and humor of all ages and nations...”

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• There are things about some professional athletes that I cannot stand-the pretense, the egos, the pomposity, the greed.

  Ted Simmons

  Success, Sports, Athlete

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• We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.

  Megan Hart

  Changed, Understood

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• Can we drop the pretense of Presidents Day and just call it I needed a long weekend because Valentines Day is garbage

  Anna Kendrick

  Valentines Day, Weekend, Long

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• Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Fighting, Men

  Eugene V. Debs' speech he gave across the street from a jail, where he had just visited three socialists who were in prison for opposing the draft, June 1918.

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• I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.

  Sarah Vowell

  College, Ideas, People

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• Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.

  Harry S. Truman

  War, Order, Law

  Radio Report on the Potsdam Conference, delivered 9 August 1945, White House, Washington, D.C.

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• I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Art, Children

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• [T]he vast regulatory structure the federal government has erected in the name of the commerce power cannot be ended overnight, in many cases, but the pretense that such programs are constitutional can be ended, even as the programs themselves are phased out over time.

  Roger Pilon

  Government, Names, Program

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• There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Scarcity, Credit

  Thomas Paine (1830). “Brief sketch of the life of Thomas Paine. Common sense. Epistle to Quakers. The crisis. Public good. Letter to the Abbe Raynal. Dissertations on government, the affairs of the bank, and paper money. Miscellaneous”, p.405

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• One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.

  Robert Benchley

  Justice, Exotic, Enthusiasm

  Robert Benchley (2016). “My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew”, p.303, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• We must put up with our clothes as they are - they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us - to advertise what we wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of suppressed vanity; a pretense that we desire gorgeous colors and the graces of harmony and form; and we put them on to propagate that lie and back it up.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Vanity, Color

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.17, St. Martin's Press

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• Music is the one thing in which there is no use trying to deceive others or make false pretenses.

  Confucius

  Trying, Use, Deceiving

  Confucius, Qian Sima (1938). “The wisdom of Confucius”, Modern Library

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