Prevarication

Prevarication (plural: Prevarications) is deviation from what is right or correct, transgression, perversion. It also means truth; deceit,evasiveness. In law it refers to the collusion of an informer with the defendant, for the purpose of making a sham prosecution, and a false or deceitful seeming to undertake a thing for the purpose of defeating or destroying it. Its related terms are prevaricate and prevaricator.

Quotes

• You come from one of the latter and you're being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence.
  • Iain Banks, in [http://books.google.co.in/books?id=hqhB3tkUSaoC&pg=PT142 The Player of Games (2008), p. 142

• My books are not quite the books I was to write when you and I were young. But I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens ...
  • James Branch Cabell, in The Certain Hour (1916), p. 189

• Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.
  • Anton Chekhov, in prevaricate – vocabulary

• The difference between [perjury and prevarication] consists in this, that perjury is a distinct assertion of that which can be proved not to be, or a denial of that which can be proved to be; whereas prevarication is the giving of contradictory or inconsistent evidence, which affects the credibility of the evidence, though neither the extent of the witness’s falsehood, nor the precise points in which he has departed from the truth be capable of ascertainment.
  • R. Clarke, in Modern Histories of Crime and Punishment, p. 316

• The lion out of the forest has smitten the great ones of Jerusalem, the wolf of the plains shall devastate them; the leopard is watching against their cities; every one who goes out shall be torn in pieces, because their prevarications are multiplied, their aversions are become strong.
  • Jeremiah, in The Apocalypse Explained According to the Spiritual Sense in which ..., Volume 5 p. 21

• Prevarications intertwined have ascended upon my neck, he hath thrust at my strength, God hath delivered me into hands, that I cannot rise up; prevarications intertwined ascending upon the neck, denotes that falses ascended towards things interior or rational.
  • Jeremiah, Lam. i. 14, in Heavenly Arcana which are in the Sacred Scripture Or Word of the ..., Volume 4, p. 398

• As to the prevarications which the court charge upon you, I think they must have had an erroneous of opinion of what constituted prevarications, as they certainly had, in my opinion of their power, to take notice of it as an offence.
  • F.S. Key in the case of a court martial in the case of Purser Zantzinger, in Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 3 (Google eBook), p. 169

• I am clearly at opinion that they had no other power, and they could not lawfully do, what I think the record shows they did, constitute themselves a court to try and condemn you for prevarication.
  • F.S. Key in case of a court martial in the case of Purser Zantzinger, in "Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 3 (Google eBook)", p. 170

• Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.
  • Stanisław Lem, in A Perfect Vacuum, p. 58

• We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom.
  • Primo Levi, in The No-nonsense Guide to World History, p. 133

• Mr. Denman was not prepared to vote all the witnesses guilty of prevarication, without having the evidence previously printed. He had voted for sending the editor to Newgate, because he had heard what he said at the bar of that House.
  • Marquis of Landonberry on the issue of Breach of Privilege in the House of Commons, in Parliamentary Debates, Volume 5 (Google eBook)

• We cannot pardon. We are to say what we take the law to be ; if we do not speak our real opinions, we prevaricate with God and our own consciences.
  • Lord Mansfield, in The Legal Observer, Or, Journal of Jurisprudence, Volume 11, p. 140

• The past is necessarily inferior to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?
  • Tommaso Marinetti, in Quotation by Tommaso Marinetti

• But I'm not experienced!' 'You're not home yet!' 'I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?' 'I left off struggling.'
  Judge: You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?'
  Co-respondent: ‘Not to wink, my Lord!
  • Donald McGill, in Essays, p. 285

• All gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher— specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs –all these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah! How weary I am of poets!
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Portable Nietzsche, in p. 240. Also attributed to Zarathushtra, in From Shakespeare to Existentialism: An Original Study : Essays on ..., p. 233

• ...far as the individual thinks and acts as one of a society, and not just any society (for it is the constraining relations between superior and inferior that often drive the latter to prevarication) but of a society founded on reciprocity and mutual respect, and therefore on cooperation.
  • Jean Piaget, in The Cambridge Companion to Piaget, p. 278

• Wash me from mine enquiry, and cleanse me from my sin; for I acknowledge my prevarications and my sin continually before Thee.
  • Psalm li, 2.3, in Heavenly Arcana which are in the Sacred Scripture Or Word of the ..., Volume 11, p. 31

• Inquiry denotes evil against the goods of faith, sin denotes evil against the goods of charity and love, and prevarication denotes evil against the truths of faith: in as much as this latter is evil proceeding from a perverse understanding, and is thus known from the truths of faith; it is therefore said, I acknowledge my prevarications. Again ‘Remember thy mercies Jehovah, and thy compassions, remember not the sins of my childhood and my prevarication.
  • Pslam xxv,6,7, in "Heavenly Arcana which are in the Sacred Scripture Or Word of the ..., Volume 11", pp.30-31

• Thou hast prevaricated with thy Friend,
  By under-hand Contrivances undone me:
  And, while my open nature trusted in thee,
  Thou hast stepped in between me and my Hopes,
  And ravished from me all my Soul held dear.
  • Nicholas Rowe in Lady Jane Gray, in The Modern British Drama: Tragedies, p. 610

• If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication.
  • Goldwin Smith, in Lectures and Essays, p. 85

• ...yet when someone like me comes along and shows your hypocrisy and the dangers of that hypocrisy, and of the willingness of prevaricating lobbyists like Hal Halpin to hide what the industry does and how it does it, then you all want to "ban" me from my rejoinders.
  • Jack Thompson (attorney), in Jack Thompson Responds to Dutch Gamer

• From all the rest I single out you,
  You are to die-let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
  I am exact and merciless, but I love you— there is no escape for you.
  • Walt Whitman, in The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War

• I don't like cryptic conversation. They require a prevaricating nature, which I do not possess. So either you.
  • Anonymous, in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Episode Scripts

• ...more so than might be expected in one who was premature in everything, and had exhausted the stock of human folly at an age when it is usually found unbroken. All his deceptions, his prevarications, his political tergiversation, etc., were such as should have been looked for in men of an advanced age, hardened by evil associations, and soured by disappointed pride or avarice.
  • In The Quarterly Review (London)

• Mariano Rajoy frustrates many with his prevarication over a fresh euro-zone bail-out, which now comes with a conditional promise from the European Central Bank (ECB) to help bring down Spain’s stifling borrowing costs.
  • In Mysterious Marian

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