Justify Quotes - Page 14

• It is very hard, if not impossible," he wrote in his study, "to justify active management for most individual, taxable investors, if their goal is to grow wealth." And he said that those who still insist on an actively managed fund are almost certainly "deluding themselves.

  Mark Hulbert

  Goal, Investing, Active Management

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• What do you want? You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring. You can't want only to love, because that's impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror.

  Paulo Coelho

  Adventure, Mirrors, Joy

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• Jorge Luis Borges wrote a poem when he was in his 80s about one day writing the book that would justify him. This was long after he had become one of the great masters, a writer everyone looks up to and reveres. As artists, I don't think we ever see ourselves as done. We always think we're at the beginning . . .

  Theodora Goss

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Past, Phases, Faces

  Jorge Luis Borges, Eliot Weinberger (1999). “Selected Non-fictions”, Viking Press

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• Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

  Alfie Kohn

  Running, Children, Thinking

  Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves.

  Haruki Murakami

  Imagination

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• But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’ Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.

  Donna Tartt

  Thinking, Tears, Matter

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• If and perhaps.... The language of procrastination and uncertainty. That's just people looking to justify their own lack of action.

  John Flanagan

  Procrastination, Ifs And, People

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• Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Historical, Doe

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.292, Vintage

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• We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we an use and kill for our purposes.

  Gary L. Francione

  Purpose, Use, Resources

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• Instead of asking what's wrong with rampant consumerism, we ought to be asking, 'What justifies it?' Popular art does not have to pander to the lowest level of intelligence and taste.

  Bill Watterson

  Art, Doe, Asking

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• The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?

  Cheryl Strayed

  Liars, Self, Order

  "Dear Sugar, The Rumpus advice Column #68: The bad things you did". therumpus.net. March 24, 2011.

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• Moving to 100 percent renewable energy means we no longer need and can no longer justify wars for oil.

  Jill Stein

  War, Moving, Mean

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.

  Sarah Dessen

  Powerful, Opportunity, Feelings

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “This Lullaby”, p.23, Penguin

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• Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

  Mercedes Lackey

  Support, Atrocities, Harder

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• To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Honesty, Business, Integrity

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• It will never do to plead sin as an excuse for sin, or to attempt to justify sinful acts by pleading that we have an evil heart. This instead of being a valid apology, is the very ground of our condemnation.

  Archibald Alexander

  Im Sorry, Heart, Apology

  Archibald Alexander (1857). “Practical Truths”

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• I change clothes at least three times a day. It's the only way I can justify all the shopping I do. Prada to the grocery store? Yes! Gucci to the dry cleaner's? Why not? Dolce & Gabbana to the corner deli? I insist!

  RuPaul

  Shopping, Clothes, Three

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• Our decisions need not be seen as resting on procedures that are merely instrumental in making judgments that are reliably truth-tracking. The procedures might be more directly related than that to truths about what is right or good, or about what we ought to do, or to principles that tell us what is true about these matters. And I have no metaphysical theory about the truth-conditions of such truths, except to say that as objective truths, they must be independent of the attitudes, decisions or actions that they are supposed to justify or for which they are to offer reasons.

  Allen W. Wood

  Attitude, Independent, Decision

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

  Emma Goldman

  Patriotism, Training, Principles

  Emma Goldman, Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, Jessica M. Moran (2004). “Emma Goldman: Making speech free, 1902-1909”, p.372, Univ of California Press

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• Violence just hurts those who are already hurt...Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

  Cesar Chavez

  Peace, Hurt, Brutality

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• More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Work, Men, World

  "Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918)" by Rudyard Kipling, 1918.

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• A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

  R. H. Tawney

  Riches, Wealth, Hell

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• The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Suffering, Doe, Fool

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Truth, Lying, Believe

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.141, Library of America

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