#pretext

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! ↗

— Charles Dickens

#pretext #self-delusion #money

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext. ↗

— Voltaire

#pretext #serves #wicked

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. ↗

— Friedrich August von Hayek

#been #emergencies #eroded #individual #individual liberty

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

#argument #balance #balance of power #never #peace

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

#nothing #nowadays #once #pretext #profound

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

#add #anything #bent #church #doing