To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
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Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.
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It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of any individual without its consent. This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union. . . . The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign, and have no pretensions to a compulsory force. They confer no right of action, independent of the sovereign will. To...authorize suits against States for the debts they owe...could not be done without waging war against the contracting State..., a power which would involve such a consequence, would be altogether forced and unwarranted.
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Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
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Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them - without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
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I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
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There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom
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Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labelled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions
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Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
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Galatians 6:7:
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. People reap what they sow.
(NIV)
Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside.) [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.
(AMP)
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
(KJV)
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Nothing shocks me more in the men of religion and their flocks than their pretensions to be the only religious people.
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True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting
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To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
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