#pretension

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many. ↗

— Adam Ferguson

#commercial #depress #equal #equal rights #every

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. ↗

— Margot Fonteyn

#any #art #induces #life #mediocrity

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#coexist #deep #deep desire #desire #economics

I have to say that my husband and my children are so tough, there really is no space for pretension. ↗

— Miuccia Prada

#husband #i #pretension #really #say

Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and buttressed their new pretensions to respect and authority with cannons and taxation. ↗

— J. M. Roberts

#authority #cannons #everywhere #further #greatest

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth. ↗

— E. T. Bell

#absolute truth #eternal #makes #pretension #science

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny. ↗

— J. K. Rowling

#class #classes #find #funny #i

The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant. ↗

— Friedrich Schleiermacher

#called #confusion #entirely #first #good

It's the time of year when the literati give advice on what we should be reading on our summer holidays. These terrifying lists often leave me appalled at my own ignorance, but also suspicious about the pretension of their advocates. ↗

— Arthur Smith

#advice #also #appalled #give #holidays

...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much... Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world. The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#unapologetic #experience