diff --git a/README.org b/README.org
index d6d3b41..72906aa 100644
--- a/README.org
+++ b/README.org
@@ -315,7 +315,7 @@ it may be time for some re-evaluation.
 # - social networks: breadth vs depth?
 #   - wholesale borrowing of surveillance capitalist assumptions
 
-** We must not pretend we can prevent what we can not
+** We must not claim we can prevent what we can not
 
 #+BEGIN_QUOTE
   "By leading users and programmers to make decisions under a false
@@ -335,7 +335,7 @@ of a system, we cannot technically prevent, yet we prohibit from
 occurring anyhow, and which we may enforce at another abstraction
 layer, including social layers.
 So here is a slightly modified version of that phrase: "We must not
-pretend we can prevent what we can not."
+claim we can prevent what we can not."
 
 This is important.
 There may be things which we strongly wish to prevent on a protocol
@@ -395,7 +395,7 @@ If we do not take this approach, we expose our users to harm.
 Users may believe their privacy is intact and may be unprepared for
 the point at which it is violated, and so on and so on.
 
-We must not pretend we can prevent what we can not.
+We must not claim we can prevent what we can not.
 This will be a guiding principle for the rest of this document.
 
 ** Anti-solutions