The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Aleister Crowley
It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes.
Arianna Huffington
If there is no hell, a good many preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses.
Billy Sunday
Hip-hop is not about pretense. You can be missing an eye; you can have an ice-cream cone in your face; you can run around with Bantu knots; you can decide to wear gold, all everything. It's not about how you look - it's about what you say. It's about what message you're getting across.
Brian Tyree Henry
The older generation grew up on blow-dried anchors, plastic politicians, and an ocean of pretense. Realness seems unvarnished and unpolished to them.
Cenk Uygur
To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense.
Charles Churchill
Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal.
Chris Ware
Good food is good food. It doesn't have to come with pretense.
Christina Tosi
The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.
Chuck Palahniuk
'A Talk to Teachers' showed me that a teacher's work should reject the false pretense of being apolitical and, instead, confront the problems that shape our students' lives.
Clint Smith
In many ways, the very notion of school choice operates under a false pretense - an assumption that every child has the same set of choices to make and the same places to choose from.
People say to me, 'Ooh, L.A. is so plastic.' Sure, it's mountains to the right, oceans to the left and pretense in the middle, but who... has to hang out in the middle?
Cree Summer
I made no pretense of doing balanced reporting about murder. I was appalled by defense attorneys who would do anything to win an acquittal for a guilty person.
Dominick Dunne
There's a lot of pretense out there. It can be exhausting. When people see something genuine, even if it's something as simple as two people actually being friends, actually enjoying what they're doing, or actually standing up for each other, that translates in a big way.
El-P
You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind.
Emmet Fox
Style equals pretense.
Enrico Colantoni
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer
Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists.
Ethan A. Hitchcock
I've found childbirth to be so unique in its ability to completely humble you while also completely empowering you. It reduces you to your essence and strips you of every pretense. It reminds you that you are no better than all the women who have come before you, but also no worse.
Eva Amurri
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
I've never been a fan of pretense or procrastination. After all, our state is defined by its independent, outspoken spirit.
In America, after 9/11, and after the death of bin Laden, and after two wars, one of them fought, a lot of people think, on false pretenses, and definitely post the Patriot Act, there are a lot of these questions about what can we do to our citizens in order to prevent the next attack.
People often think that the world fashion is so full of a certain pretense that it can't just be about going for something because it suits you and looks great, and it's nicely cut and is made of beautiful fabric. You know, if it has a bit of lightness and playfulness to it, then I think people just respond to that really well.
There's something very noble about the bowling shoe. It has very little pretense, and it's kind of naughty. You have to share them with a bunch of other people, which is so kinky in a way that I like. What other shoes would you actively share with other people?
Frankly - and believe me, I say this without any pretense - when I see the road I've taken, I have to say that thanks to good luck, because without good luck one can do nothing, I've come out pretty well.
I ask every Communist individually to set an example, by deeds and without pretense, a real example worthy of a man and a Communist, in restoring order, starting normal life, in resuming work and production, and in laying the foundations of an ordered life.
Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.
My father got to see the first 10 years of my career. He implored me to always appreciate people who are not operating under any sort of false pretense or who weren't caught up in their own success.
There was no pretense to objectivity; 'Time' had a partisan Republican point of view, and if it was one not shared by many of its gentrified Ivy Leaguers, few felt the compulsion to quit.
I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.
The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
Sometimes you just wonder whether people just don't have the sensitivity or decency. I'm a member of the media myself: I host a talk show. I know sometimes when you want to ask something, you can circumvent it with words and vocabulary. You don't suddenly just go out there and ask something directly in the pretense of being absolutely candid.
I look for a girl without pretense who is sweet and intelligent - preferably brunette, but that's not completely important.
I love stories, and my life is principally concentrated on stories, but not with a pretense of scientific precision.
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
I have Peter O'Toole's autograph on a first-edition copy of his autobiography that I acquired under false pretenses.
The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude.
Blackfoot was one of the ultimate live bands... there was no pretense, no gimmickry; it was sound, lights, and rock and roll. Our whole goal was to be terrifying... to strike fear and cause havoc in a closing band's minds.
Say what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt.
When you're undercover you try to stay as true to your identity as you are. You know who you are, and you know how you normally function. If you try to put on a pretense, such as assuming a fake voice, you have to put on that fake voice all of the time. And you can't afford to slip out of it. It's too dangerous.
Speaking of honesty, if you're like me you turn on the news to get information - a set of facts. If you want opinion, you come to shows like mine, where our prejudices and biases and opinions are made known; there's no false pretenses that you're getting pure objectivity.
I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.
Trump makes no pretense about being the commander in chief of all of the country, being president of all of the people, including the people who voted against him. He is, in effect, a tribal chieftain who has declared war on half of the country.
Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
I've lived with myself for a very long time, so I'm aware of what I look like. I'm under no false pretense that I'm a stunner, so if somebody comes up and says something about my physical appearance, it's okay.
I'd been in Sacramento a day and already noticed the pervasiveness of its homeless problem. The city seemed like California without the masks or pretense: a place where dreams were occasionally made but mostly torn apart.
I don't do interviews under false pretenses.
