Pretension Quotes

1. "In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many."
Author: Adam Ferguson

2. "I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they're more like groupy than glue. If they're on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with."
Author: Aidan Chambers

3. "And as I looked, it became very clear that this five-and-ten-cent ship was in some way connected with human pretensions. This suffocating interior of a dime-store ship was my own personal self; these gimcrack mobiles of tin and plastic were my personal contributions to the universe."
Author: Aldous Huxley

4. "These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves."
Author: Aldous Huxley

5. "I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English."
Author: Alfred Nobel

6. "The inability of Darwinian psychology to account for human reasoning is devastating to its pretensions to be a science. The prestige of science depends on the application of highly advanced practical and theoretical reason. A 'science' that is incompatible with such reasoning is therefore at odds with the very essence of scientific activity."
Author: Angus Menuge

7. "This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!"
Author: Anton Chekhov

8. "He sighed deeply: to fall in love at first sight with this malodorous sleeping girl, with, as far as he could see, no pretensions 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 That they hadn't exchanged a word, nor spoken, made no difference. He, heart whole until that minute, and with no intention of marrying until it suited him, had lost that same heart."
Author: Betty Neels

9. "People. Falling for each others' pretensions, fakeness and whatever various faces they can put on to wear. And then they call it love. What a fantasy. What a blasphemy. Humanity bores me."
Author: C. JoyBell C.

10. "To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

11. "And people turn to internet with the hope that in this virtual world, where real identity need not be disclosed, they will find someone before whom they could be their true self,without any pretensions and get an opportunity to release the pent-up emotions and feel light."
Author: Chitralekha Paul

12. "Tied to the physical, deaf to the eternal, riveted by my own shortcomings, I was thinking only of what a bad choice I'd made when choosing a partner for a chat. This guy was faking timidity to lure someone over. If I said victim, he was likely to start gnawing my neck. If I said vampire, he would demand proof. I hadn't the fangs enough to back that pretension."
Author: Christine Wicker

13. "Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth."
Author: E. T. Bell

14. "The proper way is lost to me; my compass spins. I therefore give my entire attention to those works that seem to me most incorruptible: the application of heat, the proportion of seasoning, the arrangement of a plate. When robbed of all pretensions and aspirations, with no proper home nor any knowledge of what discord tomorrow brings, I still may have a pocketful of dignity. The Roman pomp and raiment have fallen away, and I see at last the glory of washed feet and shared bread."
Author: Eli Brown

15. "What encouragement the apostle holds out to us. O my friends, that we might leave all our pretensions, and come to the truth in our own hearts."
Author: Elias Hicks

16. "Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."
Author: Frank Herbert

17. "Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through "innocence" or "ignorance." The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God,"
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

18. "Nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see."
Author: Georg Simmel

19. "We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we'll achieve a better world."
Author: Guy Laliberte

20. "If they wish to alleviate the sufferings of the exploited classes, let them live up to their pretensions, let them abandon the academy and go out there and work politically and economically and in a humanitarian spirit."
Author: Harold Bloom

21. "I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension."
Author: Herb Kelleher

22. "I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions."
Author: Hugo Chavez

23. "I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more;' and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel."
Author: Jane Austen

24. "Usted me humilló como convenía, usted me enseñó lo insuficientes que eran mis pretensiones para halagar a una mujer que merece todos los halagos."
Author: Jane Austen

25. "...I have no pretension whatever of that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere."
Author: Jane Austen

26. "What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. — Darcy"
Author: Jane Austen

27. "Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed."
Author: Jeanette Winterson

28. "We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}"
Author: John Adams

29. "Their pretensions are naked and vulnerable and for that reason, to me at least, rather charming."
Author: Julian Fellowes

30. "An ideological movement is a collection of people many of whom could hardly bake a cake, fix a car, sustain a friendship or a marriage, or even do a quadratic equation, yet they believe they know how to rule the world. The university, in which it is possible to combine theoretical pretension with comprehensive ineptitude, has become the natural habitat of the ideological enthusiast. A kind of adventure playground, carefully insulated from reality in order to prevent absent-minded professors from bumping into things as they explore transcendental realms, has become the institutional base for civilizational self-hatred."
Author: Kenneth Minogue

31. "The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank man, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness; one who loves life, and understands the use of it; obliging alike at all hours; above all, of a golden temper and steadfast as an anchor. For such an one we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker."
Author: Lessing G.

32. "Read the Bible as you would Livy or Tacitus. For example, in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still for several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of their statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature (Works, Vol. ii., p. 217)."
Author: Livy

33. "Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."
Author: Margot Fonteyn

34. "Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive."
Author: Mary Douglas

35. "La belleza se encuentra en las cosas pequeñas que, sin pretensiones, saben engastar en el instante una gema de infinitud"
Author: Muriel Barbery

36. "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."
Author: Os Guinness

37. "Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma."
Author: Patrick White

38. "He was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life.""
Author: R. Bosworth Smith

39. "Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

40. "In old magazines and newspapers we find a number of uncomfortably revealing things: the aged as young, the dead as living, forgotten people as celebrities, an array of our own barbarous and long-discarded fads and postures, and worst, visible only in this removed perspective, our own sickening pretensions to meaning and permanence."
Author: Robert Grudin

41. "Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle."
Author: Samuel P. Huntington

42. "Most cats don't like water, and despite her pretensions of tigerhood, Julie was no different. Yes, tigers have stripes; so do tabbies. If you want to know the difference, try tossing one of each into your swimming pool. Then I would recommend running."
Author: Seanan McGuire

43. "Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid's lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty."
Author: Stephen King

44. "I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension."
Author: Stephen Mangan

45. "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."
Author: Thomas Stephen Szasz

46. "I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting."
Author: Tom Bodett

47. "If you try to go beyond your interests just for the sake of pretensions or wealth, your art becomes less legitimate."
Author: Vincent D'Onofrio

48. "I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly."
Author: William James

49. "Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions."
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

50. "I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight."
Author: Zadie Smith

Pretension Quotes Pictures