Pretension Quotes - Page 7

• 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

  Men, Order, Cases

  Adam Smith (1778). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.390

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• Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead becoming the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone we will use the moment it comes close enough

  Orson Scott Card

  Enemy, Going Away, Wish

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• I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

  Wayne White

  Art, Thinking, Play

  "That's what art really tries to do. Just strip away all the pretense and it's trying to entertain and excite". Interview with Julie Thomson, logger.believermag.com. October 9, 2013.

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• Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

  George Carlin

  Play, Creating, Roles

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• It is vain to try and hide a bad spirit from the eyes of them who are spiritual, for it will show itself in speaking and in writing as well as in all other conduct, it is also useless to make great pretensions when the heart is not right before God, for God looks at the heart, and where the heart is not right the Lord will expose it to the view of the faithful.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Spiritual, Eye, Writing

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• I've been playing piano my whole life but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. I don't have professional pretensions. I've learned so much. So many things I've been doing in the visual, two-dimensional painting world parallel many of the inner working of music - how intervals resolve into each other, harmonic rhythm, tonal things - there's a whole vocabulary that overlaps. Sometimes people see pianos in my works - that I never think.

  Caio Fonseca

  Thinking, People, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.

  Henry Fielding

  May, Admiration, Wells

  Henry Fielding (1811). “The History of Amelia”, p.113

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• What makes me mad is arrogance, pretension, putting on airs.

  David Duchovny

  Air, Mad, Arrogance

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• There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom.

  George W. Bush

  Tyrants, Hatred, Reign

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 2005

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• Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Animal, Past

  Jeanette Winterson (1995). “Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd”, Knopf

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• Despite its scientific
  pretensions, economics still remains more of an art than a science

  Robert Kuttner

  Art, Economics, Stills

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• Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

  Paul Harvey

  Rain, Men, Garden

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• For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?

  John Campbell Shairp

  Talking, Enlightenment, Generations

  John Campbell Shairp (1871). “Culture and Religion in Some of Their Relations”, p.140

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• ... a canvas that I have covered is worth more than a blank canvas. My pretensions go no further; that is my right to paint, my reason for painting.

  Irving Stone

  Painting, Canvas, Reason

  Irving Stone (1937). “Lust for Life: The Novel of Vincent Van Gogh”

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• What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?

  Denis Norden

  Cheese, Harps

  Frank Muir, Denis Norden (1984). “The utterly ultimate 'My word!' collection”, Methuen Pub Ltd

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• We're being treated to the wisdom of some puffed up, little fart. Doing exactly what I used to do, pretensions to anarchy and art.

  Don Henley

  Art, Media, Littles

  Song: Damn It, Rose

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• I don't know how to put on any tough guy pretensions.

  Anson Mount

  Guy, Tough, Know How

  "Anson Mount Hell on Wheels Interview". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. November 09, 2011.

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• After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Drawing, Hands, Play

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.5, Courier Corporation

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• I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions.

  Hugo Chavez

  Country, Focus, Wish

  "Hugo Chávez grants rare interview to western media" by Stephen Sackur, www.theguardian.com. June 13, 2010.

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• I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.

  Zadie Smith

  Political, Novelists, Insight

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• I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

  William James

  Doubt, Lovers, Disorder

  "The William James Reader".

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• In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Running, Flower, Silly

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• Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Strange, Cosette

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

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• Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death - this infantile fixation of mine - was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry - with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.'

  Ingmar Bergman

  Night, Feelings, Arrogance

  Interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, 1971.

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• ... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.

  D. A. Carson

  Spiritual, Children, Heritage

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.26, Baker Academic

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