Judgment Quotes - Page 12

• The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

  Saul Alinsky

  Father, Hero, Mean

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.34, Vintage

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• A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, Stronger

  David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (2011). “The Letters of David Hume: 1727-1765”, p.305, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Most of the people dishing out judgment have no working experience of the theatre, have not written a professional play, a sketch, or even a joke; have never worked in a theatre, taken an acting class, or published any extended piece of work. They are creative virgins; everything they know about theatre is book-learned and second-hand.

  John Lahr

  Taken, Book, Class

  "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

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• At the piping of all hands,When the judgment-signal's spread-When the islands and the landsAnd the seas give up their dead,And the South and North shall come;When the sinner is dismayed,And the just man is afraid,Then Heaven be thy aid,Poor Tom.

  John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

  Giving Up, Men, Islands

  John Gardiner Calkins Brainard (1846). “The Poems of John G.C. Brainard: A New and Authentic Collection, with an Original Memoir of His Life”, p.70

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• I think silence is the condition you accept as the judgment on your crimes.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Silence, Crime

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.342, Pan Macmillan

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• I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.

  Eugene McCarthy

  Kind, Instruments, Nations

  "Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race, Dies at 89" by Francis X. Clines, www.nytimes.com. Decemebr 11, 2005.

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• Man is the "ethical animal" ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being is based upon his consciousness of himself.

  Rollo May

  Unique, Men, Animal

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.130, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. ... Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value - a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value.

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Unqualified, Claims, Proportion

  Arnold Schoenberg, Leonard Stein (1975). “Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg”, p.190, Univ of California Press

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• That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man bath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

  George Mason

  Men, Law, Land

  "The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America" compiled and edited by Newton Thorpe, Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1909.

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• Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith .

  Max Weber

  Meaningful, Judging, Matter

  Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.81, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Philosophy, Stupid, Intelligent

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.126, Beacon Press

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• The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Rejection, Effort, Intellectual

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.41, Routledge

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• Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments.

  Michel Foucault

  Night, Vanity, Light

  Michel Foucault (2013). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.111, Vintage

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• The problem with every judgment of sexual behavior is that it is made by people who aren't being stimulated as they are making the judgment. A jury that sees a woman in a sterile courtroom, asks her what she wanted, and then assumes that anything else she did was the responsibility of the man is insulting not only the woman but the power of sex.

  Warren Farrell

  Sex, Responsibility, Men

  Warren Farrell (1994). “The myth of male power: why men are the disposable sex”

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• A man's clarity of judgment is never very good when you're involved, and as you grow older, and as you grow more involved, your clarity of judgement suffers.

  Leo Szilard

  Men, Suffering, Clarity

  "Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts", edited by S. R. Weart and G. W. Szilard. Quoted in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 35, No. 2, p. 38, February 1979.

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• You should visit before you pass judgment on a place.

  Tanith Lee

  Should

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• Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law.

  John Millington Synge

  Law, Pirate, World

  1907 The Playboy of the Western World, act 2.

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• In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.

  Roger Scruton

  Sex, People, Desire

  Roger Scruton (2007). “Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged”, p.106, Encounter Books

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• For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.

  Michael Walzer

  War, Lying, Men

  Michael Walzer (2015). “Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations”, p.26, Basic Books

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• In the judgment of design engineers, the ordinary means of communicating with a computer are entirely inadequate. [...] Graphical communication in some form or other is of vital importance in engineering as that subject is now conducted; we must either provide the capability in our computer systems, or take on the impossible task of training up a future race of engineers conditioned to think in a different way.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 4, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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• It is galling to see such mendacious hypocrites as Kennedy and Biden at the Senate Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment on distinguished jurists.

  Conrad Black

  Hypocrite, Sitting, Biden

  "The World According to Conrad Black". www.thestar.com. March 11, 2007.

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• We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected Judiciary inferior to Congress or the President in making policy judgments. That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.

  Alberto Gonzales

  Country, Judging, President

  Speech to American Enterprise Institute, www.justice.gov. January 17, 2007.

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• If I cannot trust someone's judgment, I cannot ask others to do so, and I would not place him at the head of my political operation.

  Chris Christie

  Political, Operations, Asks

  News conference on George Washington Bridge scandal, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2014.

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• Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way.

  David Gergen

  Football, Thinking, Yes You Can

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• We believe, from everything we have been told by the intelligence community, by 12 years of history with Iraq, by the experience of the U.N. inspectors and by other intelligence agencies in other countries that Saddam Hussein had the intention to develop weapons of mass destruction and to have such weapons, and that was a sound judgment which I still believe to this day because he had had them in the past, he'd used them in the past.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Believe, Past

  "Secretary of State Colin Powell". Interview with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. March 25, 2004.

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