Top 100 Quotes About Pretext
#1. Behind my non-cooperation there is always the keenest desire to cooperate on the slightest pretext even with the worst of opponents. To me, a very imperfect mortal, ever in need of God's grace, no one is beyond redemption.
Mahatma Gandhi
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. Think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling
was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#5. All the power [the State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power.
Albert Jay Nock
#6. Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.
Ludwig Quidde
#7. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.
Charb
#8. Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.
Gus Van Sant
#9. They use the pretext of avoiding war, to make you swallow any kind of peace, said Paul. They use the pretext of a revolution to involve us in any kind of war, said Jardinet.
Simone De Beauvoir
#10. A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
#11. Once a decade, once every eight years, Donald Trump finds some pretext to say I suck and that I'm bad.
Kurt Andersen
#12. War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.
Guy Sajer
#13. 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
#14. By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed.
Spencer W. Kimball
#15. At every step there is a pretext for enmity against our brother.
John Of Kronstadt
#16. As long as my opponent has not yet castled, on each move I seek a pretext for an offensive. Even when I realize that the king is not in danger.
Mikhail Tal
#17. I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur's cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master's car.
Nelson Mandela
#19. Nor is there any valid reason to reject the idea of God or the notion of the sacred just because of the sickly expression Christianity has given to them, any more than it is necessary to break with aristocratic principles on the pretext that they have been caricatured by the bourgeoisie.
Alain De Benoist
#20. Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
Charles Caleb Colton
#21. Temporary deviations from fundamental principles are always more or less dangerous. When the first pretext fails, those who become interested in prolonging the evil will rarely be at a loss for other pretexts.
James Madison
#22. It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.'
By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!
G.K. Chesterton
#24. Everything ends this way in France - everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs - everything is a pretext for a good dinner.
Jean Anouilh
#25. 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
#26. Treacherous assassins, enemies of the people, and worthy of everyone's ridicule are those who, under the pretext of guiding future generations, teach them an isolated system of doctrines and whisper in their ear (instead of the sweet message of love) the barbarous gospel of hate.
Jose Marti
#27. It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.
Charlotte Bronte
#28. They knew only too well the intimate bond which unites faith with worship, 'the law of belief with the law of prayer,' and so, under the pretext of restoring it to its primitive form, they corrupted the order of the liturgy in many respects to adapt it to the errors of the Innovators.
Pope Leo XIII
#29. In the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.
Arthur Koestler
#30. At the end of the afternoon she tore herself away from the story to go and buy some tobacco. This would be tricky on a holiday, but never mind, it was mainly a pretext so the story could settle and she'd have the pleasure of meeting up with her new friend again a bit later on.
Anna Gavalda
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. Reading is only a pretext for our bodies to stick together, like a sculpture, fused in a way that when trying to separate one from other, or the work remains intact or is completely lost
Ben Oliveira
#34. May no one use religion as a pretext for actions against human dignity and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman.
Pope Francis
#35. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless.
Vladimir Lenin
#36. There is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.
Mark Twain
#37. What is the strongest pretext for loving? ... If it is necessary, our atomized consciousness invents love, imagines it or feigns it, but does not live without it, since in the midst of infinite dispersion, love, even if as a pretext , gives us the measure of our loss.
Carlos Fuentes
#38. 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
#39. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words.
Peter Abelard
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom.
Pope John Paul II
#43. Politics are always a struggle for power, disguised and modified by prudence, reason and moral pretext.
William Hurrell Mallock
#44. Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
John Taylor Gatto
#45. Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.
Walt Whitman
#47. I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition.
William Monahan
#48. If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.
John Bright
#49. [T]hese [ideas] are only suggestions of the evil spirit who, to jeopardize your salvation, suggests to you extraordinary works that are beyond your strength, under the fine pretext of practicing, on your own, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy ...
Vincent De Paul
#50. Not to open the hunting season on the pretext that there is no game would be as if one gave up celebrating Christmas because there was not enough snow to go by sleigh to midnight Mass.
Maurice Grimaud
#51. We must always be on guard lest, under the pretext of keeping one commandment, we be found breaking another.
Saint Basil
#52. 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
#53. To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire
#54. Give no poor fool the pretext to think ye are claiming knowledge of what no mortal knows.
C.S. Lewis
#55. Neglecting small things under the pretext of wanting to accomplish large ones is the excuse of a coward.
Alexandra David-Neel
#56. Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.
Randal Marlin
#57. Anyone who finds himself incapable of grasping the complexities of a work hides his withdrawal behind the most superficial pretext because he has not gotten past the surface.
Julio Cortazar
#59. Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.
Georges Braque
#60. The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases.
Evo Morales
#61. There was a pretext, albeit slender, that might have prompted Hayek to reach out to Keynes: Keynes had succeeded Edgeworth as editor of the Economic Journal in 1911. But
Nicholas Wapshott
#62. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary
Karl Marx
#63. The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.
Michael Pare
#64. 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
#65. So this is the way we live now: conditioned by the awareness that no North Korean provocation, however egregious, can be confronted, lest it furnish the occasion or pretext for something truly barbarous and insane.
Christopher Hitchens
#66. The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses.
William S. Burroughs
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.
Richard Whately
#70. Instead of preaching the good news that sinners can be made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come, the gospel has degenerated into the pretext that we can be happy in Christ and escape the hassles of life.
Ray Comfort
#71. The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Aesop
#72. Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime ...
Lord Acton
#73. 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
#74. The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
Robert Smithson
#75. The Mahabharata was not composed with the aim of describing a battle. The description of the battle serves only as a pretext.
Mahatma Gandhi
#76. 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
#77. Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth.
Thomas More
#78. The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.
Luc De Clapiers
#79. It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008-9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons.
Noam Chomsky
#80. 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
#81. And what do you say of lovers of wine ... they are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine
Plato
#82. And among the other honours and rewards our young men can win for distinguished service in war and in other activities, will be more frequent opportunities to sleep with a woman; this will give us a pretext for ensuring that most of our children are born of that parent.
Plato
#83. The rolls of music that she herself had thrown into the trash with the pretext that they had rotted from dampness kept spinning and playing in her memory.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#84. He who wishes to injure another, will soon find a pretext.
Publilius Syrus
#85. 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
#87. Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins.
Jean-Francois Cope
#88. 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
#89. You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!
John F. Kerry
#90. Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
#91. 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
#92. The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.
Luc De Clapiers
#93. In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.
Vladimir Putin
#94. It is intolerable that the world's religions - founded on the values of love and compassion - should provide a pretext for the expression of hatred and violence.
Federico Mayor Zaragoza
#95. A 1940 Gallup poll showed 83 percent of the public was against intervention. A good pretext was needed to gain support from an intransigent public.
Jim Marrs
#96. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
James Madison
#97. A pretext-not a cause-is sufficient for us to enter the "solitary situation", the situation of the dreaming solitude. In this solitude, memories arrange themselves in tableaux. Decor takes precedence over drama. Sad memories take on at least the peace of melancholy.
Gaston Bachelard
#98. 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
#99. In a thing, they can create a pretext coined hundreds of excuses , but the truth is only one.
Khem Veasna
#100. Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement.
Steven Pinker
