Pretense Quotes - Page 4

• Many times Christians state their love for the Lord and their willingness to die for Him. I will make no pretense of knowing the Lord's will in your life, but I do feel that in most cases the Lord is far more interested in our living for Him than He is in our dying for Him.

  Zig Ziglar

  Christian, Knowing, Dying

  Zig Ziglar, Dwight "Ike" Reighard (2013). “The One Year Daily Insights with Zig Ziglar”, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• I don’t claim to know an over-arching ‘Meaning of Life,’ but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence.

  David G. McAfee

  Religious, Roots, Creator God

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Aug 06, 2014

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• Probably no one of us has the True Religion. But all of us together - if we are allowed to be free - are discovering ways of conversing about the great mysteries. The pretense to know all the answers to the deepest mysteries is, of course, the grossest fraud. And any people who declare a Jihad, a holy war on unbelievers - those who do not share their believers' pretended omniscience - are enemies of thinking men and woman and of civilization. I see religion as only a way of asking unanswerable questions, of sharing the joy of a community of quest, and solacing one another in our ignorance.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  War, Ignorance, Men

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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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• I assure you, Constable Morgan, I am quite sane, as I understand the word, perhaps the sanest person in this room, for I suffer from no illusions. I have freed myself, you see, from the pretense that burdens most men. Much like our prey, I do not impose order where there is none; I do not pretend there is any more than what there is, or that you and I are anything more than what we are. That is the essence of their beauty, Morgan, the aboriginal purity of their being, and why I admire them.

  Rick Yancey

  Men, Order, Essence

  Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Real, Genuine, Existence

  Thomas Bernhard (2011). “Woodcutters”, p.41, Faber & Faber

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• Music, unleashed, can uplift and create and destroy, stripping away pretenses and leaving raw, exposed vulnerability behind.

  C.E. Murphy

  Uplifting, Leaving, Stripping

  C.E. Murphy (2010). “Truthseeker”, p.42, Del Rey

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• The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Differences, Doe

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.397, Knopf

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• He dropped the pretense, and dropped his head, so his brow came to rest against the sun-warmed top of hers. His arms went around her and drew her in, and Karou and Akiva were like two matches struck against each other to flare starlight. With a sigh, she softened, and it was pure homecoming to melt against him and rest.

  Laini Taylor

  Two, Arms, Sun

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• It has long been observed, that an atheist has no just reason for endeavouring conversions; and yet none harass those minds which they can influence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of their own doctrines, they are desirous to gain the attestation of another understanding: and industriously labour to win a proselyte, and eagerly catch at the slightest pretense to dignify their sect with a distinguished name.

  Samuel Johnson

  Atheist, Winning, Names

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.40

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• Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.

  Alexander Pope

  Self, Giving, Advice

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.122

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• So much of my life has been about self-effacement, pretense, masquerading, concealment, and indirection.

  Marlon Riggs

  Self, Confession, Has Beens

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• The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Power, Men

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• Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.

  Alan Watts

  Truth, Lying, Heart

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.38, New World Library

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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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• An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Heart, Rights, People

  James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers: The Making of the US Constitution”, p.19, Arcturus Publishing

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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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• 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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• The management system which makes only a pretense of valuing employee involvement and encouraging employee empowerment merely breeds cynicism.

  George E. P. Box

  Cynical, Empowerment, Management

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• Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive.

  Jack Donovan

  Struggle, Men, Costumes

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• We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

  George W. Bush

  Lying, Sacrifice, Presidential

  Address to Joint Session of Congress Following 9/11 Attacks, delivered 20 September 2001

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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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• 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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• 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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• [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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