Pretext Quotes - Page 5

• Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Vanity, Giving, May

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• The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Sad, Unhappy, Usual

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• Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Glowing, Vitality, Desert

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• Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Religion, Crime, Thousand

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.103

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• A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

  John Stuart Mill

  Acting, Likes, Affair

  John Stuart Mill (1869). “On Liberty”, p.187

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• What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Believe, Motive

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense of Life”, p.261, Courier Corporation

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• There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Cheating, Writing, Two

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Art of Literature: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.6, 谷月社

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• Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins.

  Jean-Francois Cope

  Color, Cities, Racism

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• The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Deceit, Our Actions

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.62

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• [T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  War, Reality, Average

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• in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.

  Arthur Koestler

  Pertinent Questions, Society, Lasts

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• The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Thinking, Purpose, Lips

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• A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend.

  Albert Pike

  War, Men, Principles

  Albert Pike (2013). “Morals and Dogma”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

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• Friendship after the flesh is very easily destroyed on some slight pretext, since it is not held firm by spiritual perception. But when a person is spiritually awakened, even if something irritates him, the bond of love is not dissolved; rekindling himself with warmth of the love of God, he quickly recovers himself and with great joy seeks his neighbor's love, even though he has been gravely wronged or insulted by him. For sweetness of God completely consumes the bitterness of the quarrel.

  Diadochos of Photiki

  Spiritual, Peace, Love Is

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• Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors.

  John Adams

  Real, Long, Liberty

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.11, Jazzybee Verlag

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• According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext.

  William S. Burroughs

  Letting Go, Dog, Boys

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• Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.

  Randal Marlin

  Democracies Have, Democracy, Action

  Randal Marlin (2002). “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion”, p.45, Broadview Press

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• I think that any photographer is an investigator. Photography is a pretext to know the world, to know life. To know yourself.

  Graciela Iturbide

  Photography, Thinking, World

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• I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hair, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.107, Bantam Classics

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• Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth.

  Thomas More

  Men, Names, Rich

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• We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indirect and apathetic.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Artist, Self, Hands

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• There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Responsibility, Decision, Weight

  "Addicted to Addicts" by Theodore Dalrymple, www.city-journal.org. 1999.

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• I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.

  Georges Braque

  Art, Skills, Weight

  Raymond Cogniat, Georges Braque, Joanne Greenspun (1980). “Georges Braque”

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• To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

  Jon Jones

  Theory Of Evolution, Facts, Alternatives

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• Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.

  Walt Whitman

  Government, Community, Intrusion

  Walt Whitman (1998). “The Journalism: 1834-1846”, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated

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