Dissemble Quotes & Sayings

Trust the story ... the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can't: the story can only ever be itself. — James Robertson

The whip degrades; a severe father teaches his children to dissemble; their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

She wants your secrets. She wants your soul. You've got to crack yourself open and find that broken, shameful piece of your heart that you'd hide from the world and God Himself if you could manage it. And then serve it up to her on a platter. — Tessa Dare

Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart! — Edgar Allan Poe

Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them. — Ivan Klima

From one minute to the next the present is merely an honorary past. It must be filled unceasingly anew to dissemble the curse it carries within itself; that is why Americans like speed, alcohol, thriller films and any sensational news: the demand for new things, and ever newer things, is feverish since nowhere will they rest. — Simone De Beauvoir

Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with the figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it served your superior. — David Halberstam

His face is so calm, He shows no sign of stress or anything. Its as if he's saying, "No problem. Relax. I'm just going to beat you now. It's not going to hurt a bit." — Dominic Roussel

Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own lightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Politicians who wish to succeed must be prepared to dissemble, at times to lie. All deceit is bad. In politics some deceit or moral dishonesty is the oil without which the machinery would not work. — Woodrow Wyatt

But Jeanie had just gone through the motions. No one would have realized, except perhaps her too-perceptive son-in-law, but that was one of the few perks of maturity: you knew how to dissemble. — Hilary Boyd

After decades of research about how children learn best, here's what we've discovered:
Children learn through play. It's the work of childhood.
Children learn through hands-on experiences. Seeing, touching, tasting, smelling are the strongest modes for early learning.
Children master communication by having conversations.
Children learn by trying to solve real problems.
Children find exploration and investigation intrinsically rewarding. The driving force is "What if . . .?" and "I wonder. . . . — Laurel Schmidt

Should we become so proficient at self-presentation that we can dissemble without anyone suspecting? — Susan Cain

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought. — Iain Banks

Maternity is on the face of it an unsociable experience. The selfishness that a woman has learned to stifle or to dissemble where she alone is concerned, blooms freely and unashamed on behalf of her offspring. — Emily James Smith Putnam

VIII. Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of walls or veils. — Marcus Aurelius

It was on the day, or rather the night, of 27 June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden ... I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious. — Edward Gibbon

A proof is that which convinces a reasonable man; a rigorous proof is that which convinces an unreasonable man. — Mark Kac

Inspiration strikes at very funny times. — Gillian Jacobs

Look upon good books; they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself...and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel. — Francis Bacon

Stannis had never learned to soften his speech, to dissemble or flatter; he said what he thought, and those that did not like it could be damned. — George R R Martin

To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings.
[Fr., Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois.] — Cardinal Richelieu

One afternoon I lay on my bed, inert with mental fatigue, enumerating my many frustrations with the country & with the task I had set myself. It had taken me months of work to get this far, & every step of the way I felt I was pushing against some mighty, unspoken resistance. Time & time again I had felt that hardly a fact or a single item of information had been volunteered; every day I made half a dozen telephone calls; I trekked out to interview anyone who would talk to me, then found myself returning to the same place to ask for more information--questions I had omitted to ask, chase details they did not think, or perhaps wish, to supply. This was as true of people who had no reason to dissemble as of those who did. — Aminatta Forna

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not. — Francis Bacon

A painless lesson is one without any meaning, one who does not sacrifice anything cannot achieve anything. — Hiromu Arakawa

[Rousseau] has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and as he scorns to dissemble his contempt of established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him. — David Hume

Spending time in Calcutta [India] really did a number on me. The way life and death are almost the same thing, the way poverty is dealt with, the sheer number of dead bodies you see, it's all pretty overwhelming. — Henry Rollins

Discipleship isn't a program or an event; it's a way of life. It's not for a limited time, but for our whole life. Discipleship isn't for beginners alone; it's for all believers for every day of their life. Discipleship isn't just one of the things the church does; it is what the church does. — Bill Hull

If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? — John Tillotson

He [Donald Trump] is a tough boss. I've known him for decades. He hasn't changed very much. He's a driven person, highly intelligent, and he's very motivated, very charismatic, and he is tough as nails in the sense there's no slack there. You can't put anything over on Donald. Donald can see right through someone trying to dissemble or spin stuff. — Geraldo Rivera

Syn checked the lorina's feeder in the kitchen. "Where are the mongrels?"
Nykyrian took a sip of tea before he answered. "They were confused by all the people. Last I saw of them, they were hiding out in my bed."
Darling frowned. "They don't bite, do they?"
Nykyrian scoffed. "I'm the only thing that bites in this house."
-Syn, Nykyrian, & Darling — Sherrilyn Kenyon

For friends ... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble. — Francis Bacon

We are so used to dissembling with others that in time we come to deceive and dissemble with ourselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write — W.S. Merwin

In fact, the converse is true: At a time when the United States has been called on for a level of moral leadership, vision and inspiration not seen since World War II, we cannot afford to dissemble about crimes against humanity. — Adam Schiff

When late I attempted your pity to move,
Why seemed you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love
But-why did you kick me downstairs? — John Philip Kemble

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim. — George Farquhar

Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do
otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to
do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. — George Orwell

Harder still was the pretense her studies demanded: the need to dissemble, to parrot her professors' orthodoxies, to feign interest in theories that were of no use to her. — John Wray