Pretension Quotes - Page 8

• The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Groups, Privilege, Intention

  "Moral Man and Immoral Society". Book by Reinhold Niebuhr, pp.6-7, 1932.

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• I make no pretensions to 'objectivity,' a fraudulent concept in an era of industrialized and politicized science in which intellectual mercenaries too often serve power and greed, the ambitions of competing nation-states, or the requirements of commerce.

  Hazel Henderson

  Ambition, Objectivity, Greed

  Hazel Henderson (1981). “The politics of the solar age: alternatives to economics”, Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press/Doubleday

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• There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sex, Vanity, Rivals

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.110

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• The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Heart, Thinking, Vanity

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.216

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• This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Class, Land, Aristocracy

  Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865.

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• Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, Years, Gold

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.58, Harvard University Press

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• Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

  Arthur Miller

  Dream, Writing, People

  Arthur Miller (2016). “The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller”, p.421, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.

  Tom Bodett

  Thinking, Self, Sufficient

  "Actually, Motel 6 Doesn't Leave the Light on for You". Interview with Kimberly D. Williams, adage.com. August 30, 2007.

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• A good analogy [Charlie Hebdo] in lots of ways is "South Park" - the hugely popular American cartoon show - and the things that the "South Park" creators have created, like "The Book Of Mormon," the Broadway musical. If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in "The Book Of Mormon," right? It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.

  Adam Gopnik

  Book, Charlie Hebdo, Musical

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I love everything about Philadelphia, and its food is like the city itself: real-deal, hearty, and without pretension. We've always had an underdog vibe as a city, but that just makes us try harder, and I love our scrappiness and scruffiness.

  Lisa Scottoline

  Real, Cities, Philadelphia

  "How I Write: Lisa Scottoline & Daughter Francesca Serritella". Interview with Noah Charney, www.thedailybeast.com. November 14, 2012.

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• I don't think couture will die. But it should have no pretension that it will conquer the world. It's not something that will disappear because all you need is a thread and a needle to start making something couture.

  Olivier Theyskens

  Thinking, Should Have, Conquer The World

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• Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.

  George Santayana

  Religious, Soul, Atheism

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.51, Рипол Классик

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• Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to embrace you!

  Moliere

  Long, Desire, Arms

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• When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.

  Stendhal

  Two, Lovers, Intimacy

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• Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.

  William E. Gladstone

  Ignorance, May, Remember

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• On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.

  Walter Brueggemann

  Commitment, Hands, Limits

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• And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Thinking, Thoughtful

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.481, Penguin

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• The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

  Richard Whately

  Demand, Christianity, Characteristics

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.14

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• Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Men, Looks, Way

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• Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Men, Practice, Favors

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• News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Ambition, Intelligent, Gossip

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• It is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions.

  John Stuart Mill

  Feelings, Doctrine, May

  Source: www.usconstitution.net

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• I do have a very conscious desire not to be academic. I'm antiacademic. I hate jargon. I hate that sort of pretension. I am a person who [commits] breaches of decorum - not in private life, but in my work. They are part of my mode of operation. That kind of playfulness is part of my nature in general. The paradox that, in a way, to take something very seriously, you can't always be serious about it.

  William H. Gass

  Hate, Desire, Jargon

  Interview with Stephen Schenkenberg, www.believermag.com. November, 2005.

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• What I bring - my team and I, because it's not only me - is this sense of elegance and casualness, and no pretension. There's also a sense of loyalty - loyalty to my customers, but also loyalty from my staff. Also, I think a sense of perfection; I'm a bit of an obsessed freak with perfection. I think I bring craziness sometimes, because if there is someone who's going to dare do something crazy, it's me.

  Daniel Boulud

  Loyalty, Crazy, Team

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

  John Adams

  Government, Support, Honor

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.85, Hackett Publishing

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