To the wicked, everything serves as pretext. — Voltaire
It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. — Noam Chomsky
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny. — Aesop
An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie. — Billy Sunday
I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved. — Shana Abe
What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. — Haruki Murakami
The most important thing is to have a good relationship with the bike... you have to understand what she wants. I think of a motorcycle as a woman, and I know that sounds silly, but it's true. — Valentino Rossi
God’s Word is absolutely true. You may not understand how God is going to bring about what He’s promised you, but He is keeping every promise that He has ever made. He will never deceive you or disappoint you, and He will never change His mind about what He’s told you. — Charles Stanley
In anything I do I try to stay true to myself because I think that's what matters most, and then the challenge is getting all these different sides of my personality to fit together in one box. It isn't an easy task. But that's basically what the end result represents. — G-Eazy
True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God. — Bill W.
When You Are Fooled Quotes
Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. — Alan Cohen
When you start fooling around with drugs, you're hurting your creativity, you're hurting your health. Drugs are death, in one form or another. If they don't kill you, they kill your soul. And if your soul's dead, you've got nothing to offer, anyway. — Paul Stanley
When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new. — Marie Howe
...and like a fool who will never see the truth
I keep thinking something's gonna change
There's a danger in loving somebody too much
And it's sad when you know it's your heart they can't touch
There's a reason why people don't stay who they are
Baby sometimes love's just ain't enough — Patty Smyth
You are fooling yourself whenever you think you are productive just because you have worked fourteen hours in a day. You will be truly productive when you do the same amount of work in four hours, and take the other ten hours to enjoy the good things life has to offer. — Ernie J Zelinski
What I hate most in life are people who are not really the peach of the day but who want to be young and sexy. You can fool nobody. There is a moment when you have to accept that somebody else is younger and fresher and hotter. Life is not a beauty contest. — Karl Lagerfeld
I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to believe the universe is 6000 years old. I think that gets translated as You are a fool to think that your daughter who died in a car accident is really in heaven with god. — Sam Harris
They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. — Bob Marley
You talk to me in parables.
You may have known that I'm no wordy man,
Fine speeches are the instruments of knaves
Or fools that use them, when they want good sense;
But honesty
Needs no disguise nor ornament: be plain. — Thomas Otway
Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job. — Erwin T. Randall
Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless. — Unknown Author
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. — Friedrich August von Hayek
The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal.That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. — Mark Twain
The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed. — James Madison
We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There's just one problem - it's in North Korea. — Jon Stewart
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs. — Denis Diderot
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
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
In my campaign I’m not going to be talking a lot about climate. Why is that? Because climate has become a crisis like Covid that the Davos groups and other totalitarian elements in our society have used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus. — William S. Burroughs
War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice. — Voltaire
Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war. — Ludwig Quidde
I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human. — Hugo Grotius
The whole race, which is now called Gallic or Galatic,is madly fond of war,high-spirited and quick to battle,but otherwise straightforward and not of evil character.For at any time or place and on whatever pretext you stir them up,you will have them ready to face danger,even if they have nothing on their side but their own strength and courage. — Strabo
It is wrong to try to avoid the struggle against imperialism under the pretext that independence and revolution are important, but that peace is still more precious. — Kim Il-sung
[Terrorism] is formed of certain fundamental problems, [including] ignorance, poverty, and fear of others. Some people take advantage of the young and foolish. They are manipulated, abused, and even drugged to such an extent that they can be used as murderers on the pretext of some crazy ideals or goals. — Fethullah Gulen
To be feminist doesn't mean simply to do nothing, to reduce yourself to total impotence under the pretext of refusing masculine values. There is a problematic, a very difficult dialectic between accepting power and refusing it, accepting certain masculine values, and wanting to transform them. I think it's worth a try. — Simone de Beauvoir
By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does. — Paul Gauguin
It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism. — Max Scheler
In Iraq, [American administration] said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction endangering mankind. With this pretext, the U.S. intervened militarily, and all they did is take control over oil fields, and oil wells. — Evo Morales
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
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. — Karl Marx
She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining. — Kate Chopin
Neglecting small things under the pretext of wanting to accomplish large ones is the excuse of a coward. — Alexandra David-Neel
History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. — Emile M. Cioran
Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth. — Thomas More
The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases. — Evo Morales
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies. — Honore de Balzac
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
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
But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity. — Herbert Butterfield
Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. — St. George Tucker
Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality. — Robert Smithson
In Conclusion
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