Justify Quotes - Page 32

• And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Art, Mean, Museums

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• To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

  Edmund Burke

  Country, Peace, War

  Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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• History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

  Paul Valery

  History, Example, Chemistry

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• History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

  Paul Valery

  Giving, Example, Want

  Regards sur le Monde Actuel (1931)

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• Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Turns, Prettiness, Maxims

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.498

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• In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Children, Errors

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.188, Vintage

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• Do not think your story [for a one-person show] is unique. . . . your story is the same as millions of others. But that's o.k. - you just need to find the one or two things that makes your story interesting enough to justify someone leaving their apartment and exchanging currency.

  Julie Halston

  Unique, Thinking, Two

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• If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.

  Emily St. John Mandel

  Light, Darkness, Enemy

  Emily St. John Mandel (2014). “Station Eleven: A novel”, p.141, Vintage

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• I've never really understood attachment to a place for reasons of birth. That my mother happened to give birth to me in a certain place doesn't, to my mind, justify any thankfulness towards that place. It could have been anywhere.

  Alberto Manguel

  Mother, Attachment, Giving

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• Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment

  Arne Jacobsen

  Furniture, Enough, Plastic

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a living human being, can we justify assuming without proof that it isn't? No one has yet offered such proof; indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary.

  Ronald Reagan

  Children, Abortion, Understanding

  "Ronald Reagan".

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• We have to understand - not justify - what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves.

  Mahmoud Darwish

  Beautiful, Love Life, People

  "Poet of the Arab world" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. June 7, 2002.

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• Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of
  such a place?

  Charles Lindbergh

  Men, Life And Death, Progress

  "Lindbergh Said to Regret Misperceptions Over Jews" by Herber Mitgang, archive.nytimes.com. April 20, 1980.

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• Legislators in Kansas, Arizona and 23 other states who are properly determined to protect religious freedom can begin by asking themselves: Does any religious conviction justify denying lesbians and gays a basic legal promise of non-discrimination in hiring, public accommodations, and housing? Surely the answer to this question is no. Correcting that inequity would begin the process of recognizing that both sides - gay couples and religious objectors - have rights and that reasonable accommodation is possible only when both sides have something to gain.

  David Blankenhorn

  Religious, Couple, Gay

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• When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender.

  Natan Sharansky

  Fear, Men, Surrender

  Natan Sharansky (1998). “Fear No Evil”, p.292, PublicAffairs

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• The sole argument generally given to justify this picture of the world is that perturbative string theories have a massless spin two mode and thus could provide an explanation of gravity, if one ever managed to find an underlying theory for which perturbative string theory is the perturbative expansion.

  Peter Woit

  World, Argument, Explanation

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• The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.

  James Nachtwey

  Ambition, Compassion, Ideas

  "War Photographer". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

  Howard Dean

  Mean, Thinking, Ends

  "Dean's 'Urban Legend'". www.nytimes.com. October 13, 2003.

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• The ends do not justify the means. If our actions will bring harm to others, even in the service of some 'good,' they are almost certainly deluded. If our actions do not come from a kind heart, from loving courage and compassion, they are deluded. If they are based on a distinction between 'us' and 'them,' they stem from delusion. Only to the extent that we act from the wisdom of no separation, understanding how we are woven together, will our intention bring benefit.

  Jack Kornfield

  Heart, Mean, Compassion

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• Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because it is impossible for me to be God — or the universal woman-and-man — or anything much. I am what I feel and think and do. I want to express my being as fully
  as I can because I somewhere picked up the idea that I could justify my being alive that way.

  Sylvia Plath

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.23, Anchor

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• A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Kindness, Men, Opinion

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• I ... express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a candle; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men.

  Michael Faraday

  Science, Men, Light

  Michael Faraday (2016). “The Chemical History of a Candle”, p.89, Library of Alexandria

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• Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.

  Eric Hoffer

  Guilty, Reason, Propaganda

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Writing, Self

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

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• No cause, no God, no abstract idea can justify the mass slaughter of innocents.

  Edward Said

  Ideas, Causes, Abstract

  Edward W. Said (2007). “From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map: Essays”, p.117, Vintage

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