Sham Quotes

“If love has taken us for a ride and passion made us ignore sham and swindle, the time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff and polish up diamonds of trust, neatly, day by day. ("Taken for a ride")”
― Erik Pevernagie

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

“His whole life was a sham, a fairy tale. The truth hidden behind a wall of lies, each lie another brick in the wall until he probably couldn't see the truth anymore.”
― Shaun Jeffrey, The Kult

“{From Lindsey's address at the funeral of renowned scientist Luther Burbank. Burbank was one of the most beloved people in the early 20th century due to his countless contributions to humanity, but when, in an interview, he revealed that he was an atheist, the public quickly turned on him, sending him hundreds of death threats. Upset and grief stricken, the kind-hearted Burbank tried to respond to every letter amiably, a task that ultimately led to his death}

. . . Luther Burbank had a philosophy that actually works for human betterment, that dares to challenge the superstition, hypocrisy, and sham, which so often have worked for cruelties, inquisitions, wars and massacres. Superstition that stood across the road of Progress, commanded, not by a god or gods, but the meanest devils that we know--Ignorance, Intolerance, Bigotry, Fanaticism, and Hate. The prejudiced beneficiaries of organized theology refused to see what Burbank, the gifted child of Nature, saw with a vision as crystal as theirs is dense and dark. And so they assailed him.

One of the saddest spectacles of our times is the effort of hidebound theologians, still desperately trying to chain us to the past--in other forms that would still invoke the inquisitions, the fears, and the bigotries of the dark ages, and keep the world in chains. The chains of lies, hypocrisies, taboos, and the superstitions, fostered by the dying, but still the organized, relentless outworn theology of another age. They refuse to see that in their stupid lust for power they are endangering all that is good.”
― Ben Lindsey

“I wanted to root into him, even as the wind said all rootedness was a sham, there were only passing arrangements, makeshift shelters and poor harbors, I love you, I thought suddenly in that rush that makes so much seem possible, I love you, anything I am you have use for is yours.”
― Garth Greenwell, Cleanness

“I’m glad you could make it,” she quipped, her voice not quite as steady as she wished.

“When you issue an invitation to your bedroom, it’s common practice to make sure the door is unlocked,” he returned without a pause. He looked beyond her and said, “It’s also common to wait until your partner’s here before you start getting the sheets hot.”

[...]

“Sorry,” she quipped lightly, “I’m not familiar with the etiquette required of a mistress. Next time I’ll make sure that you’re in the bed before I throw hot coals at it.”
― Patricia Briggs, When Demons Walk

“A charlatan walked as a prophet,
and changed the world of sheep in his wake,
and all that while,
God watched
with blind eyes,
helpless…”
― Vijay Fafat, The Ninth Pawn of White - A Book of Unwritten Verses

“Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left.”
― Sean Hannity, Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda

“She put a few drops of the liquid in the bottle on her hands and rubbed it into her skin. When she felt the familiar warmth begin to seep into her hand, indicating that it was indeed a liniment of some sort, she splattered it liberally on Kerim’s back and set to work.

“Remind me to recommend you to the Stablemaster,” said Kerim, his voice tight with pain. “You need to find more honest work than thievery.”

“Honest?” questioned Sham, pressing deeply into his back with her thumbs. “I’m the most honest thief in Purgatory, just ask the Shark. I pay him a copper a week to say so.”
― Patricia Briggs, When Demons Walk

“The first inclination of this generation is to talk, talk, talk-about anything and everything, at anytime and in any way. But the problem is, talk is a sham when it is from a person who knows not much and to whom talk is a pass-time. Know, stay silent, dream big, dare, take risks, talk, think, love...that's the definition of my zeal. And that's the definition of greatness”
― Asuni LadyZeal

“It seemed to me that, no matter what endeavor I was involved in, I was to be something of a sham.”
― Peter David, Sir Apropos of Nothing

“There was something Dikeledi called sham. It made people believe they were more important than the normal image of humankind. She had grown up surrounded by sham.”
― Bessie Head, Maru

“Health and safety in the USA is largely a sham and it is not surprising that the new Boeing 737 Max started repeatedly flying itself into the ground with a total loss of all life.”
― Steven Magee

“The legal system is a sham.”
― Steven Magee

“Forgiveness, she continues, exists only between people who are qualitatively different from one another. Thus parents can forgive their children as long as the children are young, because the parents are their absolute superiors. Between equals, the gesture of forgiveness destroys the foundations of human interaction so radically that after such an act, there can basically no longer be a relationship. To forgive someone can mean only to forego taking revenge, to pass by in silence, and that is a fundamental leave-taking, "while revenge always remains close to the other person and does not sever the relationship."
Revenge "remains close to the other person" because people manifest themselves to each other in speech and action. That is, even in their mistakes and misdeeds, people are people and form relationships. In the same entry, Arendt went even further to say that forgiveness between equals was a "sham event." The burden that someone has put on his own shoulders is apparently lifted, while the other, the forgiving person, must accept a burden and at the same time appear to be "unburdened," to rise above the other and his misdeed. Only thus can the wrongdoer be unburdened of his wrong action. No one, Arendt wrote, can be that unburdened.”
― Marie Luise Knott, Unlearning with Hannah Arendt

“Paranoid Systems of History (PSH), a short-lived periodical of the 1920s whose plates have all mysteriously vanished, natch, has even suggested, in more than one editorial, that the whole German Inflation was created deliberately, simply to drive young enthusiasts of the Cybernetic Tradition into Control work: after all, an economy inflating, upward bound as a balloon, its own definition of Earth's surface drifting upward in value, uncontrolled, drifting with the days, the feedback system expected to maintain the value of the mark constant having, humiliatingly, failed. . . . Unity gain around the loop, unity gain, zero change, and hush, that way, forever, these were the secret rhymes of the childhood of the Discipline of Control—secret and terrible, as the scarlet histories say. Diverging oscillations of any kind were nearly the Worst Threat. You could not pump the swings of these playgrounds higher than a certain angle from the vertical.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Workplace health and safety enforcement through OSHA is a government sham!”
― Steven Magee

“Ghana was a thoroughly triumphal visit for Malcolm X, with exception of one sour event: As Malcolm was departing from his hotel on the way to the airport, he bumped into Muhammad Ali, who was touring West Africa, and Ali snubbed him. Later Ali eagerly expressed his unconditional loyalty to Elijah Muhammad, ridiculing Malcolm to a New York Times correspondent and laughing at the “funny white robe” his onetime friend wore and his newly grown beard. “Man, he’s gone. He’s gone so far out he’s out completely.” With words he would later regret, the boxer added, “Nobody listens to that Malcolm anymore.”
― Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

“Afraid of disclosures,
You tend to move away from your real friends,
Seeking company of those eyes
That can’t penetrate.

Welcome to the world of sham!
You’ve lost the last one who cared!”
― Neelam Saxena Chandra, Rhyming with Life

“A.K. Warder, Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, University of Toronto, who has no interest in whitewashing either side of the conflict, writes: ‘The Turkish conquests of more than half India between 900 and 1300 were perhaps the most destructive in human history. As Muslims, the conquerors aimed not only to destroy all other religions but also abolish secular culture.’2 Will Durant, the well-known chronicler of civilisations, is as categorical: ‘The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history … its evident moral is that civilization is a precious thing whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians.’3 The degree of physical destruction is vouched for by noted art historian Heinrich Zimmer too, who laments that in north India ‘very little survives of the ancient edifices that were there prior to the Muslim conquest: only a few mutilated religious sites remain.’4
Amartya Sen concedes that ‘the slash and burn culture of the Muslim invaders … devastated several cities and ruined many temples, including particularly famous ones in Mathura, Kanauj, and (Somnath).’5 He also acknowledges the account of the Arab–Iranian traveller Alberuni who accompanied Mahmud to India, of this carnage. ‘Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed these wonderful exploits, by which Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions.’6 However, he believes that the Hindutva movement is deliberately highlighting Muslim destruction ‘through motivated selection and purposefully designed emphases as well as frequent exaggeration’.7 He is in a hurry to move away from the barbarism of the Muslim invasion to the undeniable and welcome syncretic elements of Hindu–Muslim culture that developed much later and over time.
It is possible that some politically affiliated sections of Hindu society are seeking to deliberately dwell on Muslim atrocities of the past in order to create religious divisions and exploit them for their own benefit. Such an approach is wrong and needs to be countered. However, it is equally wrong to gloss over history and falsify it for present-day ‘secular’ imperatives.”
― Pavan K. Varma, The Great Hindu Civilisation: Achievement, Neglect, Bias and the Way Forward