You're So Phony Quotes & Sayings

Reality TV now doesn't feel reality TV when it started. The line between reality and fiction is blurred. So many of these people are phony or shallow, in their own right. If you've ever watched any of The Real Housewives, or those types of shows, they're all performing. Even though they're real people, they're performing. — Portia De Rossi

I think we're in an age starved for genuine experiences, instead of cathartic phony experiences through the media, structured, engineered experiences. And those are the fast food, the masturbation of experience. They don't really exhaust any aspect of ourselves; they don't make us any stronger. — Chuck Palahniuk

Phony never led anyone to Jesus. — Mark Hall

It's like you always have to put on a happy face, be the phony baloney, and I'm so not that. I never was that; I'll never be that. That is part of the business that I don't like. Maybe that will always keep me an outsider, I don't know. But that's fine. — Chloe Sevigny

A company of wolves, is better than a company of wolves in sheep's clothing. — Anthony Liccione

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. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy. — Paul Krassner

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. — Clive Cussler

New Rule: Conspiracy theorists who are claiming that we didn't really kill Bin Laden must be reminded that they didn't think he did the crime in the first place. Come on, nutjobs, keep your bullshit straight: The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition by George W. Bush to distract attention from Hawaii, where CIA operatives were planting phony birth records so that a Kenyan named Barack Obama could someday rise to power and pretend to take out the guy we pretended took out the Towers. And I know that's true because I just got it in an e-mail from Trump. — Bill Maher

Just once I'd like to meet a fella who isn't a phony. Somebody who doesn't wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys. — Libba Bray

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around. — Van Morrison

You just have to do the thing that you feel is true to your vision, and then the audience will make the decision. But as soon as you feel like you're creating a product to just cater to what you think they want, it never works. It always feels phony. And the audience can tell immediately. — Rob Zombie

I know a 'crime against nature' when I see one. It is usually a sign of crimes against nature that we cannot bear to see them at all, that we recoil and hide our eyes, and no one has ever cringed at the sight of a soybean factory. I also know phony arguments when I hear them
unbridled appetite passing itself off as altruism, and human arrogance in the guise of solemn 'duty.' We must, as C.S. Lewis advises, 'reject with detestation that covert propoganda for cruelty which tries to drive mercy out of the world by calling it names such as 'Humanitarianism' and 'Sentimentality. — Matthew Scully

A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases. — Charles Jencks

W: Nobody's so gullible as scientists. All the phony mediums say so. Can't quite see why.

J: Oh, yes, it would be so. They think they know, you see. That's always dangerous.

~Wharton; Jessop — Agatha Christie

I used to wonder about the fake pictures that came in frames you buy at the store - ladies with smooth brown hair and show-me smiles, grapefruit-headed babies on their sibling's knees - people who in real life probably were strangers brought together by a talent scout to be a phony family.

Maybe it's not so different from real photos, after all. — Jodi Picoult

Nothing had worked out the way it should have. All of the hopes had turned out to be phony, as false as those Audioanimatronic animals at Disney World, just a bunch of clockwork, a cheat, a false dawn, a false pregnancy, a - — Stephen King

I am so spoiled. I cannot watch a show where it gets interrupted for ads. I have to TiVo it and skip through the ads, because the culture of advertising is so false and phony that I just ... ugh, you know? — Alan Ball

The battle for freedom and liberty really never is over, and there are really low points in it, but I'm not giving up, and I'm not gonna engage in phony pep talks, either. — Rush Limbaugh

People striving for approval from others become phony. — Ichiro Suzuki

Said I'll make it big when, everybody know me
Well, I made it big and, everybody phony — Mac Miller

The only thing worse than a coach or CEO who doesn't care about his people is one who pretends to care. People can spot a phony every time. — Jimmy Johnson

I have been able to sniff out a phony. — Jennifer Coolidge

Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony 'encyclopedia' compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in. Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research. — Al Kooper

Indigos disrespect and dislike anyone who's disingenuous. Indigos can feel phoniness in other people, and they won't be phony themselves. Indigos would rather be punished than say something contrary to their feelings. You — Doreen Virtue

I'm me. I can't put on airs. I'm not a phony. I know the way I am hurts me more times than it helps. But somehow it's all tied up with my integrity, and my integrity is the last thing I'm going to let you take from me. — Tony Dorsett

The moment you sense someone is making something because they think people are gonna buy it or like it, it's just so phony! The public has a nose for phony like nobody else. — Zooey Deschanel

Let's define a Crapitalist: A well-connected friend of the powers that be who scores big bucks at taxpayer expense. From bagging millions in tax dollars for phony "green energy" companies that go bust, to vacuuming public coffers to build glitzy sports stadiums, to utilizing little-known tax credit loopholes to loot $1.5 billion a year for Hollywood movies - Crapitalists know how to use every trick to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. Rather than playing and winning in the rough-and-tumble world of business competition, Crapitalists use government to rig the game in their favor and leave you and me - the taxpayers - holding the bill. These corporate sissies know their ideas suck, so they try to stack the deck to privatize their profits and socialize their losses.
And there's the rub: crony capitalism is socialism's Trojan horse. — Jason Mattera

Elections in L.A. are so different. Here you've got politicians with phony smiles making false promises to voters with fake boobs and bad toupees. — Jay Leno

In Hollywood, you can't say anything bad about anybody or everyone is going to attack you. It's like you always have to put on a happy face, be the phony baloney, and I'm so not that. I never was that; I'll never be that. That is part of the business that I don't like. — Chloe Sevigny

Artie: It's in here.
Jim: Let's check this [box] first, Artie.
Artie: Oh. [Finding a fake Sword of Kuniyoshi] Phony! How do you like that? Phony!
Jim: Artie ... so are our bonds.
Artie: Oh. You can't trust anybody these days.
Wild Wild West (TV) Season 3
Night of the Samurai — Wild Wild West TV

What's so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn't any difference between people - well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends? — Christopher Isherwood

How many reality shows can you watch? They're so obviously phony. — Eric Braeden

I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony. — Roald Dahl

You know your inside, and you know the others' outside: that creates jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony? Maybe their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping. — Rajneesh

I let people see the cracks in my life. We can't be phony. We've got to keep it real. — Charles R. Swindoll

that imposter or phony feeling at work or school rarely has anything to do with our abilities, but has more to do with that fearful voice inside of us that scolds and asks, "Who do you think you are? — Brene Brown

Don't support the phonies, SUPPORT THE REAL — Tupac Shakur

As a piece of writing, The Elementary Particles feels like a bad, self-conscious pastiche of Camus, Foucault and Bret Easton Ellis. And as a philosophical tract, it evinces a fiercely nihilistic, anti-humanistic vision built upon gross generalizations and ridiculously phony logic. It is a deeply repugnant read. — Michiko Kakutani

Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. — Mitt Romney

Look, you're small-town. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long. What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand pasttime, like bowling or t.v. or a New Year's Eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?"
I think that Mr. Partisan is sincere."
You're going to get stuck with that pin, babe, don't forget what I told you. Watch those slicks. They are as phony as a lead dime. — Charles Bukowski

Coming from money in a place like this gives you automatic popularity and acceptance if you care about those kinds of things, but I don't.
It's phony.
Nothing genuine can ever be cultivated under those circumstances, and I'm fine with this. — Jason Myers

The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world. — Richard Yates

I see many people trying to write well about the wilderness, and essentially failing. To me there are basically two aspects of a failed outdoor story. One is the phony epiphany on the mountain top. — Tim Cahill

It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. — Chuck Palahniuk

But she had loved her philosopher so strongly that she had made him believe that her body was aroused and ecstatic. Ibn Rushd had been fooled. Men were easily deceived in such matters because they wanted to believe they had the power to arouse. She wanted to make him believe he pleased her. But the truth was that she could give physical pleasure to a man but not receive it, she could only imagine what such pleasure might be like, she could watch and learn, and offer up to her lover the outward signs of it, while trying to fool herself, as well as him, that yes, she was being pleasured too, which made her an actress, a phony, and a self-deceiving fool. — Salman Rushdie

Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel. — Oscar Levant

Man prides himself on being the only animal who can modify his nature, yet when he chooses to do so he is called a phony. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. — Nathanael West

When he greeted them on Day 16, he said, "Thanks so much, such great food for us." This time he gave a false, fake laugh. Phony. I thought of my mother . Her disdain for phonies was even greater than her disdain for the lazy. — Shannon Kirk

I live in my own way, I don't consider you. I don't consider anybody at all - because if you start considering others you can't live your life authentically. Consider and you will become phony. — Osho

Catfish Hunter was a man among men. He was a genuine person. There was nothing phony about him. I learned a lot from him, both on and off the baseball field. — Vida Blue

He was part of a ruined generation of young men coddled by their parents -by their mothers especially- raised on unearned self-esteem, in a bubble of overaffection, in a sad incubator of phony achievement. — Jess Walter

I believe it was Today show fourth-hour host Kathie Lee Gifford who said, 'If drag queens love you, you'll have the longest career in the world. They know phony and they know real.' — Kathie Lee Gifford

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. — Ursula K. Le Guin

He was incredibly phony, a complete poseur... He pretended to be interested in technology, but he wasn't. He was a marketing guy, and that is what marketing guys are: paid poseurs. — Walter Isaacson

I'm not a phony-friendly guy and I'm usually very quiet and not a big laugher, so some people might take that for rudeness and being mean. If anyone ever got that impression, I apologize. I love all my fans and really appreciate all their support! — Jesse McCartney

She probably knew what a phony slob he was. — Anonymous

Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at seven o'clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayons. I was still beating myself up when the round robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?
"I'm sorry," I finally said. "I was just reminded of something very painful." And I guess that wasn't a lie. — Sarah Hepola

I didn't have to fit into a mold. You make the mold. People can smell a rat. If you're doing thing for marketing and for a record label, you're going to set yourself up to be called a phony. As long as it's true to you, you do it. — Anthony Evans

As we grow in disciplined, self-sacrificing love, so we will grow in intercessory prayer. Superficially fervent prayers devoid of such love are finally phony, hollow, shallow.5 — Alexander Strauch

You might be scared to start. That's natural. There's this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It's called "impostor syndrome." The clinical definition is a "psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments." It means that you feel like a phony, like you're just winging it, that you really don't have any idea what you're doing. — Austin Kleon