Pretension Quotes - Page 8

• Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.

  Thomas Szasz

  Disease, Helping, Medical

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences”, p.324, Syracuse University Press

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• He sighed deeply; to fall in love at first sight with this malodorous sleeping girl, with, as far as he could see, no pretentions to beauty or even good looks, was something he had not expected. But falling in love, he had always understood, was unpredictable, and, as far as he was concerned, irrevocable.

  Betty Neels

  Girl, Falling In Love, Sleep

  "Love & Marriage".

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• Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. “I have chosen you,” Jesus said, “you have not chosen me.” We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally “have no choice.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Responsibility, Rights

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• Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation; some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted; some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Men, Quality

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• Just make sure your intentions are not pretensions.

  Emil Ludwig

  Planning, Intention

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• Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Two

  Samuel Johnson (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.301

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• 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

  Men, Feet, Numbers

  "Report to Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards and the Authorities of the Church", statement upon requesting rebaptism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 5, 1849.

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• 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

  Baby, Children, School

  Sir Francis Galton (1870). “Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences”, p.14

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• It was possible at last to hear the silence to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Light, Appreciate, Silence

  Robert Charles Wilson (2014). “The Chronoliths”, p.272, Macmillan

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• The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Effort, Finals, Limits

  1941 The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol.1.

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• Nothing really succeeds which is not based on reality; sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is nothing and power is everything.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Honesty, Successful, Reality

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1875). “Success and Its Conditions”, p.3

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• 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

  Believe, Mind, Doe

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• 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

  Answers, Sin, Duty

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.4527, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• If fallacies come knocking at my door,I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score,Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt,And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive,And prove me one too ready to believe,Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Running, Lying, Believe

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.1117, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Clothes, Pedestal, Sculpture

  Yves Saint Laurent (1983). “Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume”, p.21, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. 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

  Men, Intellectual, Doubt

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.116, Xist Publishing

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• I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.

  Dylan Thomas

  Men, Thinking, Here I Am

  Dylan Thomas (1968). “Quite Early One Morning”, p.113, New Directions Publishing

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• That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Distance, Character, Order

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.79

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• Faith begins where religious pretension ends

  Austin Farrer

  Religious, Ends

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• Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.

  William Hazlitt

  Kings, Character, Imagination

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays”, p.158

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• I'd been to a lot of shows and I was just tired of people being jaded about music in general. Just a lot of pretensions, a lot of the attitude that goes along with it was a little difficult for me to deal with.

  Girl Talk

  Attitude, Tired, People

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 30, 2006.

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• Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Pride, Thinking

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1466, Delphi Classics

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• Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.

  William Hazlitt

  Real, Hypocrisy, Feelings

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays”, p.44

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• Pretension is nothing; power is everything.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Power

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• Psychoanalysis will fade away just as mesmerism and phrenology did, and for the same reason - its exploded pretensions will deprive it of recruits

  Frederick Crews

  Phrenology, Reason, Recruit

  Frederick C. Crews, Frederick Crews (1988). “Skeptical Engagements”, Oxford University Press, USA

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