False Impression Quotes & Sayings

I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It's obvious that five days is just enough to give one a false impression of any country. — Muriel Lester

Here too it's masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show ...
I'd gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Did they love me? The question is beside the point, somehow. Certainly they each spoiled me, mainly by giving me the false impression that I was entitled to attention nearly all the the time. They played. THEY were like children, if you consider that one of the things about being a child is that you are a parasite of sorts and have to brazen out self-righteously. I want. They were good at wanting and I shared much more common ground with them than with my mother when I was three or four years old. — Lorna Sage

I capture reality, never pose it. But once captured, is it still reality? I've always tried to play with the false impression of reality, with the ambiguity of appearances. Things are what they seem to be, or maybe something else. I use people as unconscous actors in little dramas they don't know they're in. These pictures are about Earthlings, but I'll let you in on a secret: I'm an Earthling myself. — Richard Kalvar

Policy makers beware: unless you are ready to admit that you are facing an essentially theological problem in the Middle East, do not go about prescribing solutions, for you may actually make matters worse - particularly by creating the false impression that economic, sociological, or political programs can fix what is, in fact, a delusion of faith — Robert Reilly

We are sorry about the way things turned out. We gave, in the phrasing of our words if not literally in the words themselves, the false impression that these pages might hold some small fragment, some slight fragrance of a greater truth. That there might be something here to be learned. Before we go any further the author of this cartoon wishes to make an apology. Such an impression was deliberately cultivated. It is a ruse. It is a lie. We are every bit as lost and afraid as children abandoned in a wood: every bit as lost as you. — Anders Nilsen

The majority of people are timid by nature, and that is why they constantly exaggerate danger. all influences on the military leader, therefore, combine to give him a false impression of his opponent's strength, and from this arises a new source of indecision. — Carl Von Clausewitz

When laying out a quote on deceit, one must not be bias by using the term him from a female nor her from a male. then they them self are giving a false impression! — Michael S. McKinney

The funny thing is, I sometimes get the impression that some people outside of the field think that there's some element of security that we have in working on a theory that hasn't made any predictions that can be proven false. In a sense, we're working on something unfalsifiable. — Brian Greene

The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life. — Sigmund Freud

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have. — Richard M. Weaver

People who say they're too busy to have lunch have a false impression of their own importance. — John Howard

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means. — Edgar Degas

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement - that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. — Sigmund Freud

My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression — Oscar Wilde

The occultist is brought into intelligent communication with the spirits of the air, and can receive any knowledge which they possess, or any false impression they choose to impart ... the demons seem permitted to do various wonders at their request. — G. H. Pember

In the light of her son's comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs Callendar was nice, and then - finding the ground safe - had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain. — E. M. Forster

For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly familiar and trustworthily physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we realize that we are like shipwrecked people trying to keep their balance on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whether they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment. — Albert Einstein

Those without an idea of who you are make you become what they think. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the remarkable things about being 19 is that you can break open a case of warm beer at midnight and still be wide-eyed and alert for your eight-a.m. class. And that gave me the false impression that my life would always be like that. — David Letterman

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow - incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No - that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun. — Arthur C. Clarke

To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness. — Jerome Frank

Both scientists and laypeople can find themselves seduced into the easy trap of wanting to assign each function of the brain to a specific location. Perhaps because of pressure for simple sound bites, a steady stream of reports in the media (and even in the scientific literature) has created the false impression that the brain area for such-and-such has just been discovered. Such reports feed popular expectation and hope for easy labeling, but the true situation is much more interesting: the continuous networks of neural circuitry accomplish their functions using multiple, independently discovered strategies. The brain lends itself well to the complexity of the world, but poorly to clear-cut cartography. — David Eagleman

Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the impression could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw indeed what many men are too wise to see. — George MacDonald

She is not what I envied in high school, the popular girl. She is something I'm not even sure existed then, the sure-footed girl. She gives the impression of being completely herself, and only a part of that impression is false. — Anna Quindlen

The journalistic tradition so exalts novelty and flashy discovery, as reputable and newsworthy, that standard accounts for the public not only miss the usual activity of science but also, and more unfortunately, convey a false impression about what drives research. — Stephen Jay Gould

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression. — Oscar Wilde

I was under the false impression that I could sing in high school, so I did a lot of musical stuff. I can't sing or dance, so that was entertaining for everyone. — Rachel Brosnahan

How does it happen that in life as in literature, rebellion, however pure, has something false about it, whereas resignation, however tainted with listlessness, always gives the impression of authenticity — Emil Cioran

Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties often aver that nothing can be done. Every activity they spend time on (besides each other) has been classified as indispensable: cleaning the house, catching the news, balancing the checkbook. (205) — Thomas Lewis

Some of the men and women who will not say in so many words the thing which is not, will deliberately give a false impression. They are not the servants of truth; they are the parasites of truth. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel. — John Gimlette

I've just grown into not having to care so much and to not try to think that I'm going to be able to plan out the way that everyone perceives me. There are no false impressions. Everyone's impression of you is going to be what it is in that isolated moment. — Kristen Stewart

If the church preaches faith in anything other than the resurrection - if it gives so much as the impression that anything else, be it political action, moral achievement, or spiritual proficiency, can save the world - it becomes just one more false, parochial prophet leading the world away from the catholic parousia of Christ in the universal death of history. — Robert Farrar Capon

Yet the voice could take fright. This Kathy Kerouac foresaw only too well when syllables suddenly started coming out of her mouth like little fragments of oblivion giving her the impression she was contradicting herself. It was in these moments, when words were both true and false, solemn and light, on the tip of her tongue and deep in the throat, that space shrank in her mouth like a hard-felt blow. — Nicole Brossard

It is easy for Christians to have the false impression that once we have established a relationship with Christ, which we believe sets us right with God, the problems of life will somehow scoot away or they will slowly be removed from our lives. — Charles R. Swindoll

Her sleep was enlivened by several dreams. One where Professor Wanstead's bushy eyebrows fell off because they were not his own eyebrows, but false ones. As she woke again, her first impression was that which often follows dreams, a belief that the dream in question had solved everything. 'Of course,' she thought, 'of course!' His eyebrows were false and that solved the whole thing. He was the criminal. — Agatha Christie

Martin was a thoroughly amiable man, a man of wide reading, but when he came to write he mounted upon a pair of stilts, unusually lofty stilts, and staggered along at a most ungracious pace, with an occasional awkward lurch into colloquialism, giving a strikingly false impression of himself. — Patrick O'Brian

Pragmatic political figures are sometimes called "moderate" or "middle of the road" because of their willingness to compromise. But the term "moderate" gives the false impression that there is a linear political continuum, with people distributed along it. The continuum metaphor hides the major role played by moral systems and the fact that pragmatic politicians in America are usually pragmatic versions of either liberals or conservatives. Not — George Lakoff