Pretext Quotes

• We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.

  Quintilian

  Life, Sloth, Excuse

  "Institutio Oratoria". Textbook by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, I. 12,

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

  Aesop

  Tyrants, Tyranny

  Aesop (2015). “Aesop's Fables”, p.18, Aesop

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

  Voltaire

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.130, Penguin

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.

  D. A. Carson

  Proof

  17 Copy quote

• Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Soul, Sufi

  9 Copy quote

• If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another.

  Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

  Peace, War, Party

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Color, Justice

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Design, Religion, Use

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!

  John F. Kerry

  Country, Order, Phony

  "America Is in No Position to Lecture Russia About Imperialism" by Sheldon Richman, reason.com. March 16, 2014.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Love, Shining, Missing

  Kate Chopin (1899). “The Awakening”, p.69

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  War, Historical, Liberty

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Volume 3: "The Political Order of a Free People". Chapter 17: "A Model Constitution", 1973.

  156 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought.

  Elihu Root

  Country, Desire, Territory

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.

  Ludwig Quidde

  Real, War, Danger

  52 Copy quote

• I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state - a new idea, this - even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Rights, Ideas, Affair

  Boris Yeltsin's speech to the summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Istanbul, news.bbc.co.uk. November 18, 1999.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.

  Robert Smithson

  Memories, Past, Reality

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.156, Univ of California Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Peace, Struggle, Independence

  Biography/Pesonal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• I add, that those who are bent on restoring the whole church ought to be well instructed in the word, and to abstain from doing anything under the pretext of simplicity.

  John Nelson Darby

  Simplicity, Church, Add

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Funny, Gun, Iraq

  84 Copy quote

• 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

  Fate, Ideas, Hysteria

  57 Copy quote

• Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.

  Lord Acton

  Liberty, Deeds, Next

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.28, Jazzybee Verlag

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.

  Leslie Stephen

  Profound, Wish, Study

  8 Copy quote

• There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.

  Otto Weininger

  Expression, Years, Ideas

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.121, Рипол Классик

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I have taken the word, by any reason, it has been because I think it is grave to kill men, under the pretext that they are mistaken on the interpretation of some point, for we know that even the chosen ones are not exempt from sometimes being wrong.

  Michael Servetus

  Taken, Men, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.

  Charb

  Violence, Needs, Activist

  "The Charlie Hebdo Affair: Laughing at Blasphemy" by Emily Greenhouse, www.newyorker.com. September 28, 2012.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?

  Alexander Hamilton

  Rights, Done, Bills

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States: The Principles of the American Government”, p.459, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source