Justification Quotes - Page 18

• I take comfort in knowing that it was the shepherds to whom the angels appeared when they announced Christ's birth. Invariably throughout the course of history, God has appeared to people on the fringes. It's nice to find theological justification for your quirks.

  Rich Mullins

  Nice, Angel, Knowing

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• The existence of a medium, after all, is its absolute justification, if as so many seem to think, it needs one and all comparison of potentialities is useless and irrelevant. Whether a water-color is inferior to an oil, or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence. [emphasis added] Let us rather accept joyously and with gratitude everything through which the spirit of man seeks to an ever fuller and more intense self-realization.

  Paul Strand

  Gratitude, Thinking, Men

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• The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Freedom Of Speech, Violence, Excuse

  "Are Radical Imams Going to Redefine Freedom of Speech?" by Alan Dershowitz, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 20, 2012.

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• If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications.

  Lennie James

  Real, Hero, People

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I want young people to be hesitant to glorify war and to demand of their leaders justification for the sacrifices they ask of our citizens.

  Walter Dean Myers

  War, Sacrifice, People

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• Little white lies are part of everyday life. If youre in court being charged with a felony, youre probably going to be tempted to lie. Or if your girlfriend asks you if the sweater she is wearing makes her look fat; youre going to lie because you love that person. There are different reasons and justifications to lie; its human nature.

  Monica Raymund

  Girlfriend, Lying, Sweaters

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• We have a responsibility as a state to protect our most vulnerable citizens: our children, seniors, people with disabilities. That is our moral obligation. But there is an economic justification too - we all pay when the basic needs of our citizens are unmet.

  John Lynch

  Senior, Children, Responsibility

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• There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

  Storm Jameson

  Vanity, Self, Self Justification

  Storm Jameson (2011). “The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell”, p.22, A&C Black

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• You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Strong, Struggle, Elephants

  Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.50, Vintage

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• The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is importnat, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe. For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself.

  George H. Smith

  Christian, Believe, Mean

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• All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

  Learned Hand

  Upset, Atheism, Purpose

  Learned Hand (1955). “A fanfare for Prometheus”

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• Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Justice, Triumph

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• Justification by faith alone, is the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns

  Charles Simeon

  Christianity, Turns, Hinges

  Charles Simeon (1833). “Horae Homileticae: Or Discourses (principally in the Form of Skeletons) Now First Digested Into One Continued Series, and Forming a Commentary Upon Every Book of the Old and New Testament; to which is Annexed, an Improved Edition of a Translation of Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon: In Twenty-one Volumes. Galatians-Ephesians”, p.13

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• Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.

  Hannah Arendt

  Lying, Past, Violence

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful.

  Margaret Deland

  Successful, Self, Cobwebs

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• For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Wisdom, Believe, Income

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.342, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• I am pleased as punch no longer to believe in a god who declares reason a sin, who will not choose many noble and great and wise things but has chosen the base things of the world, the foolish things, the weak things and the things which are not. A god who can choose his companions in eternity and prefers Jerry Falwell and Tammy Bakker over Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. I am no longer a fool for Christ's sake. And I have no more desire to be a sheep than to be a fool. It is possible to pull out justification for imposing your will on others, simply by calling your will God's will.

  Ruth Hurmence Green

  Wise, Believe, Sheep

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• Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.

  Edward de Bono

  Simple, Energy, Attention

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• Once we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of our whole system of beliefs, evidence, and justification, and seen that it works only, despite its pretensions, by taking the world largely for granted, we are not in a position to contrast all these appearances with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our ordinary responses, and if we could it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind.

  Thomas Nagel

  Taken, Mean, Reality

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• First of all, I had the desire for that format [silent movie], and then when I was talking to people, I felt that people needed justification. Why are you doing a silent movie? Is it just for your own pleasure? I felt it was not enough for them so I realized I have to choose the subject that will make things easier for them and to tell the story of a silent actor makes sense for doing a silent movie.

  Michel Hazanavicius

  Talking, People, Desire

  "Director Michel Hazanavicius the Artist Interview". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. November 26, 2011.

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• The usual justification for eating extra meals is that it keeps the metabolism "revved up" so that weight loss is easier. There is, however, very little hard evidence that supports this idea, and a fair amount that disputes it.

  Andrew Weil

  Loss, Ideas, Support

  "Intermittent Fasting: A Healthy Choice" by Dr. Andrew Weil, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 6, 2012.

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• My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they're going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

  Amy Winehouse

  Drinking, Thinking, Years

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• The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Self, Care, Narrative

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• Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Acceptance, Dark, Love Is

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• There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Knows

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.72, Penguin

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