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Phony Quotes

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Phony Quotes

“In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.”

MoralMoralityDramaCapitalismSmileTheatreFakeMaskSelf ControlSmilingPhonyCorporate CultureMasksCorporate WorldFaking
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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“Anyway. I think forcing yourself to keep up appearances and putting up this identity that isn't yours, a mask you don't wear when you're alone, is phony. If you have to do all that stuff to get someone to love you, then can you really say they love you and who you really are? Once you change yourself to win affection, to win love, I don't even know if you can still call you you. If you've built your relationship on pretense and lies, it'll probably fail in some way or another, and if you've fundamentally changed yourself, then it's not really you.”

LoveRomanceChangePersonalityAffectionPhonyMasksHachiman HikigayaSocial Capital
Book:やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。5
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“You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques.”

LifeTruthSexMoneyHonestHigh SchoolPhony
Book:THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
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“Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?”

SelfHappinessCommunitySacrificeHonestySlaveryGenuineEmptinessTaoismBe YourselfDishonestyPrestigeAuthenticPhonyStatusSocial PressureArtificialitySocial Role
Book:Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
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“Religious faith is by nature the most fundamental set of beliefs that one can have. It is how a believer views the world, and is how the believer judges himself as well as the other people, things, and events in that world. It colors everything about them. It is for this reason that people who adopt a faith out of convenience appear so phony, and why it is simply not possible for an individual to have a "religion d'jour.”

ReligionFaithPhonyBelieversChanging Religion
Author:Mike Klepper
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“Although I know I'm one of Warren Beatty's many lovers, I also know I'm the main one of many—the last stop before the ball-and-chain main squeeze, which is what Julie Christie is.”

PhonyJezebelGolddiggerRichard PryorNo GoodHomewreckerHussyGolddiggersStarfckerTwotimer
Book:Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir
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“I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away.”

IfsWritingBookCharacterMovingPurposeBehindsReaderComfortablePagesUltimateSmellBlockNovelistsPlotOutlinesPhonyPlausibleSynopsis
Author:Clive Cussler
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“Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayWellsEnoughMagicStageParticularOrdinaryScientistTricksObjectivesMortalsPerformersArrogantPsychicsFooledScrutinyPhony
Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)
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“It considers not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others so that a completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed away into its billions of separate containers, or "people.”

PeopleWorldFeelsHumansBookIdeasRealFeelingsHumanityFallReadingStarsEmotionWifeCryInspireFalling In LoveBillionsRelateReal WorldMovie StarPhonyContainersReplica
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2005
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“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.”

KnowsChildrenCoursesChallengesFantasyAdultsDragonsUnnecessaryPhonyFactual
Book:The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
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“He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there and he says to me in this ad, until you have the guts to call me a phony soldier to my face, stop telling lies about my service. You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, and then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media and a TV ad, to walk into as many people as he can walk into.”

PeopleKnowsSaidUseFacesLyingWalksMediaStupidTvsSoldierIraqWoundsGutsCall MeCombatAdsVeteranBeltsHatefulPhonyValiantTelling LiesCombat VeteransBlatant Lies
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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“The War Party has two wings: the Democrats and the Republicans. All others are outsiders, whose ability to storm the gates is 'legally' restricted by a nearly impassable series of bureaucratic obstacles designed to keep them out while still maintaining the 'democratic' illusion, i.e. the phony two-party system, which is in reality a single entity.”

StillsTwoWarRealityAbilityPartyRepublicanIllusionWingsDemocraticSeriesDemocratObstaclesStormGatesOutsidersEntityMaintainingPhonyTwo Party System
Author:Justin Raimondo
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