Pretensions Quotes
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True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
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More Pretensions Quotes
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
Reinhold Niebuhr— 1941The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol.1.
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
cicero— As quoted in Great Catches; or, Grand Matches (1861) by Eleanor Frances Blakiston, p. 82
I have not come to seek place, nor to interfere with the business and calling of those men who have borne the burden since the death of Joseph. I throw myself at your feet, and wish to be one of your number, and be a mere member of the Church, and my mere asking to be baptized is an end to all pretensions to authority.
oliver cowdery— Cowdery's statement upon requesting rebaptism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Report to Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards and the Authorities of the Church, (April 5, 1849).
I HAVE no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.
francis galton— Hereditary Genius (1869; 2005), p. 56
To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.
william hazlitt— No. 191 (Lecture VIII, "On the Living Poets")
Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what your mind does all collapse, since the premises for such inferences are either inadequate or unknowable.
Gilbert Ryle— Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (10) Solipsism
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
Adam Smith— Chapter I, Part III, p. 862
She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.
william makepeace thackeray— The Rose and the Ring (1855), Ch. 2.
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
cicero— Cicero, as quoted in Great Catches; or, Grand Matches (1861) by Eleanor Frances Blakiston, p. 82
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
freda adler— Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975, pg. 155)
I give you a replica of liberator Simon Bolivar's sword. For you who, like Bolivar, took up arms to liberate your people. For you who, like Bolivar, are and will always be a true freedom fighter. [Mugabe] continues, alongside his people, to confront the pretensions of new imperialists.
hugo chávez— Praising Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as a freedom fighter, as quoted in "Chavez's colourful quotations" at BBC News (12 November 2007)
Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.
rutherford b. hayes— As quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1991) by William A. DeGregorio, p. 290.
But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 33 (Phineas Redux (1874))
Pictures of politicians preen across our TV screens, pretensions plaques and posters fill our minds and magazines. Promises a burning match, igniting dreams of straw…
dawud wharnsby— "The War/La Ilaha Il Allah"
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
— Cicero, as quoted in Great Catches; or, Grand Matches (1861) by Eleanor Frances Blakiston, p. 82
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
— As quoted in Great Catches; or, Grand Matches (1861) by Eleanor Frances Blakiston, p. 82
It is of no consequence what the principles of any party, or what their pretensions, are; the spirit which actuates all parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of oppression, and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty, all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural affections.
— Edmund Burke, in A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a View of the Miseries and Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artifical Society (1756)
We dislike the IRA, most of us, and fear it.We are a peaceful and democratic people.But our history, our idealistic pretensions and our fatal ambivalence have stuck us with an ideology that is warlike and anti- democratic, and calls increasingly for further human sacrifice.
joyce carol oates— 1985 In the NewYork Review of Books, 29 Apr.
I am sure that the immediate abolition of the slave trade is the first, the principal, the most indispensable act of policy, of dutyand of justice the legislature of this country has to take, if it is indeed their wish to secure those important objects? For we continue to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves, we continue it even yet, in spite of all our great and undeniable pretensions as civilisation.
— 1792 Speech to the House of Commons, 2 Apr.The House did not abolish slavery until1806.
Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.
— Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) p. 184
