Definition of Pretext

Pretext

Ostensible reason or motive assigned or assumed as a color or cover for the real reason or motive; pretense; disguise.

Related Definitions:

As, Assigned, Assumed, Color, Cover, Disguise, For, Motive, Or, Ostensible, Pretense, Real, Reason, The

Pretext Quotations

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich August von Hayek

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.
Denis Diderot

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.
Jon Stewart

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.
Kim Il-sung

In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought.
Elihu Root

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

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

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.
Boris Yeltsin

The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.
Robert Smithson

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
Quintilian

Armaments are necessary - or are maintained on the pretext of necessity - because of a real or an imagined danger of war.
Ludwig Quidde

She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
Kate Chopin

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on.
Robert M. La Follette

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

There are house demolitions and destruction all over the West Bank and Gaza. Just yesterday in Gaza they demolished three towers under the pretext that they were built close to a settlement.
Ahmed Yassin

More Pretext Quotations

Pretext Translations

pretext in Dutch is smoesje, smoes, draaierij, dekmantel
pretext in German is Scheingrund
pretext in Spanish is pretexto

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.