In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Alexander Cockburn
If the program goes off track again due to recession, this should not become a pretext for the imposition of more austerity measures.
Antonis Samaras
General Zia-ul-Haq, a dictator and unscrupulous political actor, used Islam as a pretext for waging war in Afghanistan and adopting an aggressive stance towards India. By advancing a more orthodox version of Islam, he was able to hold on to a repressive regime and quell any opposition.
Asma Jahangir
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
Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them.
Carlo Goldoni
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
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Edmund Burke
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
Colonialism subdues in many dulcet guises. It conquered under the pretext of spreading Christianity, civilization, law and order, to make the world safe for democracy.
F. Sionil Jose
Calling into question the Touquet deal on the pretext that Britain has voted for Brexit and will have to start negotiations to leave the union doesn't make sense.
Francois Hollande
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich August von Hayek
A ruler of men faces two possible misfortunes: if he employs the worthy, the ministers will use worthiness as a pretext to rob their ruler of his power, but if he promotes men recklessly, his affairs will be neglected, and he will not prevail.
Han Fei
For me, each journey to Romania is also a journey into another time, in which I never knew which events in my life were coincidence and which were staged. This is why I have, in every public statement I have made, demanded access to the secret files kept on me which, under various pretexts, have invariably been denied me.
Herta Muller
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
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
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
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
Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
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
The Republicans abandoned the pretext of democracy to fight a war for power long ago.
Once a decade, once every eight years, Donald Trump finds some pretext to say I suck and that I'm bad.
If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.
Who is against democracy? Is it the one who calls for peaceful resistance, or the one who bombs people, sheds their blood and leads them away from the leaders under feeble and dirty pretexts?
A large-scale crisis - whether a terrorist attack or a financial crash - would likely provide the pretext to declare some sort of state of exception or emergency, where the usual rules no longer apply.
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.
It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.
Over the years, there have been a series of concepts developed to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that the U.S. was defending itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s, that was wearing pretty thin.
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.
As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.
I thought fashion was just the pretext to do images with lots of freedom and get them published in magazines. You could express your point of view, make statements about women and about what you believe in.
If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on.
The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
In what was called the second siege of Leningrad, thousands died, but Putin and his partners in crime got rich. Then Putin killed even more Russians when he had the FSB explode bombs in apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 to give himself the pretext to seize dictatorial powers.
As a woman, it's frustrating to understand and accept the fact that there are so many messed up young boys who threaten girls under the pretext of freedom of speech.
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.
There are many projects that come an actor's way, and one cannot say yes to all of them. Reasons of saying no vary all the time, but for me, it has never been on the pretext of not wanting to work with 'a particular actor' ever! I would never do that.
Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.
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.
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Post-bifurcation, I raised my voice and sat on an indefinite fast in Guntur in October 2015. Eight days into the fast, I was forcibly evicted by the police on the pretext that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was coming to Amaravati.
