Justification Quotes - Page 4

• Something having been done just about everywhere just about always is no kind of justification for doing it now.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Done, Kind

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, books.google.ru. March 4, 2010.

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• I am not your justification for existence.

  Margaret Atwood

  Existence

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.122, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets

  Khalil Gibran

  Regret, Children, Our Children

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• With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

  Azar Nafisi

  Self Esteem, Lying, Matter

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.47, Random House

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• What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our 'police action' in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification for what they did - or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?

  Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  Hate, Patriotic, Government

  "A Canticle for Leibowitz". Book by Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1960.

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• It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Men, Virtue

  C. S. LEWIS (1947). “THE ABOLITION OF MAN”

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• Those who love him love that he sells the most art; they take it as a point of faith that this proves Kinkade is the best. But his fans don't only rely on this supply-and-demand justification. They go back to values.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Fans, Demand

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• Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.

  Alan Rickman

  Character, Play, Judging

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• There have, for years, been comparative studies of religious fanaticism and factors that correlate with it. By and large, it tends to decline with increasing industrialization and education. The US, however, is off the chart, ranking near devastated peasant societies. About 1/2 the population believe the world was created a few thousand years ago: the justification for the belief is that that is what they were ordered to believe by authority figures to whom they were taught one must subordinate oneself. And on, and on.

  Noam Chomsky

  Religious, Believe, Years

  Source: chomsky.info

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• Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.

  Clayton Christensen

  Lying, Infidelity, Cost

  Harvard Business Review, Michael D. Watkins, Clayton Christensen, Kenneth L. Kraemer (2015). “Harvard Business Review Leadership Library: The Executive Collection (12 Books)”, Harvard Business Review Press

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• Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

  Jodi Picoult

  Honor, Soap Bubbles, Lines

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #2: Perfect Match, Second Glance, and My Sister's Keeper”, p.305, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Rights, Novelists

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.78, Penguin

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• Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used that tragic event as a justification to rip up our constitution and our civil liberties. And I honestly believe that one or two 9/11s, and martial law will be declared in our country and we're inching towards a police state.

  Michael Moore

  Country, Rip, Believe

  "The capped crusader" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. October 4, 2003.

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• The left hemisphere acts as an "interpreter," watching the actions and behaviors of the body and assigning a coherent narrative to these events. And the left hemisphere works this way even in normal, intact brains. Hidden programs drive actions, and the left hemisphere makes justifications. This idea of retrospective storytelling suggests that we come to know our own attitudes and emotions, at least partially, by inferring them from observations of our own behavior.

  David Eagleman

  Attitude, Ideas, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.143, Vintage

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• Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

  Jose Saramago

  Needs, Bread, Existence

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• To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Order, Land

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.192, Counterpoint

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• A rigorous doctrine of imputation is not only limiting but ends up doing a disservice to the nature of grace and justification. It makes the transactions of the gospel basically juridical. In the Roman view, justification and sanctification are a seamless fabric. It is more than a question of God simply seeing us through a legal scrim of Christ's righteousness. Righteousness actually begins to transform us.

  Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

  Views, Grace, Doctrine

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• The justification for rap rock seems to be that if you take really bad rock and put really bad rap over it, the result is somehow good, provided the raps are barked by an overweight white guy with cropped hair and forearm tattoos.

  John Jeremiah Sullivan

  Tattoo, Rap, Hair

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• There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale, neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by un-enturbulating some of their theta by any one of the three valid processes. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Two, People, Listening

  "Science of Survival". Book by L. Ron Hubbard, p. 170, 1951.

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• The gross debaucheries and atrocious cruelties are covered with a resplendent mental veil because of the systematic exposition of the philosophic principles in all fields of vice. Its justification by logical method as well as by precepts and examples only makes vice more horrible in effect, both for degenerate and normal beings

  Iwan Bloch

  Vices, Principles, Example

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• We cannot simply speak out against an escalation of troops in Iraq, we must act to prevent it... There can be no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide whether to fund military action, and Congress can demand a justification from the president for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out.

  Edward Kennedy

  Military, Speaks Out, Iraq

  "Official: First wave of troops to Iraq by Jan. 30". www.nbcnews.com. January 9, 2007.

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• I think, that a man never passes the verge of moral humility, till self-righteousness be dethroned, till the high and towering imaginations of the man's own righteousness by the law be levelled by the mighty weapons of the gospel, and he brought to submit to the righteousness of God for justification, which is, in the gospel revealed 'from faith to faith.'

  Ebenezer Erskine

  Humility, Men, Thinking

  Ebenezer Erskine, Donald Fraser (1836). “The Whole Works of the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, Minister of the Gospel at Stirling: Consisting of Sermons and Discourses, on Important and Interesting Subjects. To which is Added, an Enlarged Memoir of the Author, by D. Fraser”, p.166

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• In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.

  Carroll Quigley

  Sake, Violence, Facts

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• Neoliberalization has not been very effective in revitalizing global capital accumulation, but it has succeeded remarkably well in restoring, or in some instances (as in Russia and China) creating, the power of an economic elite. The theoretical utopianism of neoliberal argument has, I conclude, primarily worked as a system of justification and legitimation for whatever needed to be done to achieve this goal.

  David Harvey

  Russia, Creating, Goal

  David Harvey (2007). “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”, p.27, OUP Oxford

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• Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations.

  George Sarton

  Appreciation, People, Greek

  George Sarton (2012). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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