Top 60 Phony Quotes

What Jazzy Jeff and rappers like him talk about is phony stuff. They’re not into street raps, into telling what’s really happening out there. They’re talking about what the white world and the white kids can identity with.

Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

Country fans can sniff out phony from a mile away.

I let people see the cracks in my life. We can’t be phony. We’ve got to keep it real.

I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions – which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‘believe in God’ and ‘don’t give up’ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

Are there memories left that are safe from the clutches of phony anniversaries?

The Democrats have concocted this whole phony ‘war on women’ narrative simply to mask their dreadful record on the economy and jobs.

I’m not different for the sake of being different, only for the desperate sake of being myself. I can’t join your gang: you’d think I was a phony and I’d know it.

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.

Managers who don’t lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don’t manage don’t know what’s going on. It’s a phony separation that people are making between the two.

I’m just happy I’m not a phony.

When you have a star, he becomes the focus of a variety show, and he has to take himself seriously. But with Super Dave, it’s all phony anyway.

I was really into films when I was younger, but I feel like a bit of a phony sometimes – I started acting because I didn’t know what else to do. I filled in all these university application forms and honestly didn’t want to do any of the courses.

I cannot be phony.

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.

The Voting Rights Act was a seminal victory for our country and a great healing moment. But there are some who want to continue to drive divisions and create phony narratives.

Commercials were too phony for me. I just didn’t like selling products I didn’t believe in.

Mitt Romney – he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung resume, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere.

There is something about a phony that creeps me out so much.

I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

With George Clooney, the distinctive quality is a unique kind of American phoniness – charming because it’s aware of itself as phony. It’s as old as old Huck Finn, but, in our age, it has migrated from the fringes to the center.

The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark.

When you’re riding around with the fellas, you want to listen to something real masculine, like ‘Boyz-in-the-Hood.’ How would it look riding around and listening to something wimpy like ‘I Need Love’ or that phony stuff Jazzy Jeff does?

I need a little more ‘Jersey Shore’ in me, I guess. It’s just not who I am. It would almost be phony at this point.

I am not fond of lengthy descriptions of phony artworks.

One of Obama’s most impressive attributes is his quiet confidence: Voters sense that he is comfortable in his own skin, a dedicated father and friend who won’t waste time with the phony rituals of Washington.

As a young man… you don’t know anything about yourself. And add on to that, you’re on the cover of magazines. People are interviewing you about what you think. You feel like a real phony.

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

If you don’t know how to hold a board, you’re going to look phony. That’s was the biggest pressure for me was to have that respect and to look up to that.

To be honest, I’m really into folk music, and I love Big Phony. I like Priscilla Ahn, and yeah, I really support Asian-American artists.

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath.

I do think that young children can spot a phony a mile away.

I think Rachel Maddow is quite good at what she does. I also think she’s a phony who doesn’t have the same passion for the truth off-camera that she seems to have on the air.

That’s what’s really bothering me about Trump is the hypocrisy, because when Trump was a candidate, and he got elected – because, by and large, he told the truth about the phony nature of the recovery.

My father was Donald Trump in many ways. His narcissism. I grew up with that generation of guys from New York, a generation of New York phony snake-oil-salesmen kind of energy.

I worked for seven years doing computer graphics to pay my way through graduate school – I have no romance with computer work. There’s no amount of phony graphics and things making sound effects on the screen that can change that.

I don’t even like wrestling really small guys a lot of the time. It just feels phony.

I look for the dark story, where something secret was done. I read and read and pick up the trail of a true story. I use nothing but true stories. They are so much better than phony ones.

Learn your instrument. Be honest. Don’t do anything phony. There is so much crap floating around. There is plenty of room for a bit of honest writing.

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.

I think the best wrestling always needs to pretend to be real, and Vince Russo’s wrestling is so pathetically far-fetched and phony that I think he does a disservice to his wrestlers and the business.

People can see through a phony.

I’m a lot of things but not a liar or a phony, even when I know it’s in my best interest to be.

If you’re looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money.

I know this sounds phony, but I don’t start out on a project going, ‘I’m going to make an emotional work,’ you know what I mean? You try to tell the story directly and honestly and with passion.

If somebody doesn’t have enough judgment to be able to look at plastic surgery and realize how phony it is, then they can’t be helped.

You don’t want to come in and be phony and be someone you’re not.

Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.

My job is to not take for granted when somebody says, ‘Oh, this is all just a made-up, phony scandal,’ or, ‘What this person did put the U.S. government at risk.’

Men get together, and they complain about their wives because it’s what they feel they’re supposed to do. It’s as phony as your frat-buddy’s stupid tribal tattoos, and everybody knows it.

Politicians make phony promises all the time that they can’t deliver.

Whenever you have a character in which one of his defining qualities is his sexuality, it’s always challenging, because you don’t want to bring in someone who’s going to play that in a phony way.

Some records with drum machines on them sound phony and plastic. It all depends on how you use the tools.

I hated L.A., so spread out, so phony. It’s like Vegas. It isn’t real.

I find when most people are offended, it’s phony. It’s an attention-seeking device. So I love to call them out on it from stage.

Instead of sounding pretentious, phony, or repetitive, I’d rather not speak.

You’ve got to be yourself, and if you’re not, you’re a phony. It comes shining through if you’re not careful.

In Sweden, stardom is looked upon as phony. You walk to the theater every day like everybody else.

Younger viewers have a very strong detector for what’s real and legit and what’s phony or pandering.