Specious Quotes
34 quotes by 30 authors
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Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot…
— Carl Sagan
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Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true…
— Bernard de Mandeville
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It's difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis. Seemingly it's just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within…
— Virginia Wade
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Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of…
— Clifton Fadiman
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The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos,…
— Niccolo Machiavelli
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The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts…
— Edward Dahlberg
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None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most…
— Samuel Johnson
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Homeopathy may be defined as a specious mode of doing nothing. While it waits on the natural progress of disease and the restorative tendence of…
— Jacob Bigelow
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Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly…
— George H. Mead
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The best thing about writing has been the writer's life, the sense of being expressed, the ownership of the day, the entirely specious sense of…
— Anthony Minghella
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The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true.…
— Robert K. Merton
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But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable;…
— David Hume
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We may conclude, therefore, that, in order to establish laws for the regulation of property, we must be acquainted with the nature and situation of…
— David Hume
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Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing…
— Reinhold Niebuhr
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My best experience as a writer was working with Michael Ondaatje. He let me dismantle his novel, reimagine it, and still had dinner with me…
— Anthony
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When Eve upon the first of Men The apple press'd with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not Adamant!
— Thomas Hood
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The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. . . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of…
— Alexander Hamilton
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Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to…
— David Lehman
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We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
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Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her…
— William George Jordan
Who Wrote These Specious Quotes
30 authors contributed a total of 34 Specious Quotes, led by these top contributors: