Top 185 Pretext Quotes & Sayings
Explore popular Pretext quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Down to the present day the luminous image of democracy has often served as a pretext for the most undemocratic actions.
Politics are always a struggle for power, disguised and modified by prudence, reason and moral pretext.
The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.
I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.
War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
If you wish at once to do nothing and be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.
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.
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.
During my five-year presidency, no one, and I mean no one under any pretext can threaten the country's interest. It puts the nation in danger.
At every step there is a pretext for enmity against our brother.
Everywhere do I percieve a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage underthat name and pretext of commonwealth.
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.
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.
A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
If the program goes off track again due to recession, this should not become a pretext for the imposition of more austerity measures.
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
In a thing, they can create a pretext coined hundreds of excuses , but the truth is only one.
Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless.
Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.
National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
A pretext is never lacking to him who would break with a friend.
Text without context is pretext.
The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases.
The Republicans abandoned the pretext of democracy to fight a war for power long ago.
Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
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.
Neglecting small things under the pretext of wanting to accomplish large ones is the excuse of a coward.
You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!
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.
We must always be on guard lest, under the pretext of keeping one commandment, we be found breaking another.
Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
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.
Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them.
The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.
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.
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.
Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.
Variety made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.
The enemy is only a pretext to test our strength
He who wishes to injure another, will soon find a pretext.
Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.
It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.
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.
I will not permit anyone to put chaos and disorder in the country under any pretext.
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.
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.
The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.
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.
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
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.
