Can't Justify Quotes & Sayings

But of course, as with anything along those lines, there are limits to that refreshment. Someone can tell it like is and then drop the N-word on you, and suddenly you're not feeling refreshed any long; you're feeling offended. I'm no lover of being overly PC, but there is a limit on how far the overconnection to that can go. You can't justify everything that way. We still want to live within the bounds of decency with one another, so I hope--especially when choosing our leaders, whose behavior should inspire us and may be modeled by our children. They should be held to a higher standard. — Megyn Kelly

We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference ... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or ... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong ... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie ... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice ... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth ... you willingly bear false witness. — Mark Waid

There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do. — Paul Krugman

Nutritionists don't stop there, because they can't: they have to manufacture complication, to justify the existence of their profession. These new nutritionists have a major commercial problem with the evidence. There's nothing very professional or proprietary about 'Eat your greens,' so they have had to push things further. But unfortunately for them, the technical, confusing, overcomplicated, tinkering interventions that they promote - the enzymes, the exotic berries - are very frequently not supported by convincing evidence. — Ben Goldacre

No man, however enslaved to his appetites, or hurried by his passions, can, while he preserves his intellects unimpaired, please himself with promoting the corruption of others. He whose merit has enlarged his influence would surely wish to exert it for the benefit of mankind. Yet such will be the effect of his reputation, while he suffers himself to indulge in any favourite fault, that they who have no hope to reach his excellence will catch at his failings, and his virtues will be cited to justify the copiers of his vices. — Samuel Johnson

You are alive, and you don't need to justify your existence. You can be the biggest mystery in your own story. — Miguel Ruiz

It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And the management." I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a Catholic canton. "Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. "It's all the same. Over here the government runs everything - so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private enterprise - and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once - you'd see it take a different gait from this." I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it. — Mark Twain

People don't like to think of themselves as sinful. They don't want to believe that they are selfish, evil people who would act much worse if unrestrained by society ... Because they believe they act from pure motives, many people live by their own moral code and can always justify their behavior. When that strategy fails they can always think of someone worse than themselves. — Douglas Beaumont

A mother is willing and capable of doing anything for her children. You can justify it if you do something for your children, especially as a Mexican mother. I don't know about some other nationalities, but the Mexican mothers are like that. They will do anything for their children. — Salma Hayek

I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees ... The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life? — Richard Russo

I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling - it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful. — James Salter

I don't know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011. — Gary Vaynerchuk

You can't justify murder by masking it with a cause. — Steve Rogers

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

learn from my mistakes. If you find something good, don't let it slip away. You can find all kinds of reasons to justify why you don't deserve to be happy, but it's all bullshit." "Auntie!" "It is," she said with conviction. "So you just keep that in mind when you're busy getting lost in your head." - — Victoria Barbour

I just don't understand, if they see numbers [of CEO salaries]that represent people, how they can somehow skirt around that and morally justify taking or ruining those lives and leaving them with nothing. That, to me, is violent crime. It's certainly more violent than selling grams of pot to other adults. — Eddie Vedder

If something happens that is highly unusual,
and no explanation is readily available,
isn't "I don't know" the only appropriate response?
How can we justify leaping to the extraordinary
conclusion that an unexplained event
is the work of a god?
Unknown means unknown. — Guy P. Harrison

The pitch we used to convince companies to spend $50 million bucks for one of our planes was that it wasn't simply a means of transportation; oh no - it was 'a productivity tool'. It allowed an executive to make good use of his travel time and a relaxed and refreshed executive could seal the deal much more effectively than his travel-worn counterpart. Yeah, right. You can always justify any obscene luxury on the grounds of productivity... — Joseph Finder

... once you start demonizing groups of people, when you make them the other, you can justify doing just about anything you want to the, can't you? Look at history if you don't believe me. — Brunonia Barry

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

No, Sarah. There's more. There's always more. I won't give you up. I won't! It's not just a game. Midgard is real for many people and it's real for what they've experienced. It's real. We don't doubt the way they feel or what they've seen or how they spend their time, so you must be real too! You have to be real, Sarah, because if you aren't, how can I justify any of it? You are a few scraps of code. I'm a few liters of blood and some bones in a bag of skin. If I'm real, you're real too! — Brandon R. Chinn

Atheistic evolutionists believe that nothing created everything - a scientific impossibility. It couldn't happen. So they redefine the word 'nothing' to mean 'something,' so that in their unthinking minds, they can justify their foolishness. — Ray Comfort

Can't you try>? However useless the effort may seem to you to be, have you anything better to do with your life? Have you some worthier goal? Have you a purpose that will justify you in your own eyes to some greater extent? — Isaac Asimov

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music. — Patrick Carney

Marketers ... Can't simply put a more environmentally friendly package on the shelves and assume that shoppers will recognize and appreciate the change. If the goal is to drive preference or justify a price premium, the environmental benefit needs to be conveyed. — Scott Young

The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd. — John Stuart Mill

These same people who tell us we must defend the lives of the unborn-they are the same people who seem not so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the accident of birth is complete! These same people who profess their love of the unborn's soul-they don't care to make much of a contribution to the poor, they don't care to offer much assistance to the unwanted or the oppressed! How do they justify such a concern for the fetus and such a lack of concern for unwanted and abused children? They condemn others for the accident of conception; they condemn the poor-as if the poor can help being poor. One way the poor could help themselves would be to be in control of the size of their families. I thought that freedom of choice was obviously democratic-was obviously American! — John Irving

My wife and I were never happy here. Spain can be narrow-minded, and provincial. In LA you don't have to justify yourself. I think I will leave here again soon and move back there. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Don't you see? We've become smart enough to justify stupid behavior. Like, 'I'm angry at him and I didn't express it, so I turned my anger inward and now it's depression, so in order to feel good again, what I should do is call him and express my anger.' It's like, if we can make it sound smart enough, we're allowed to do stupid things. — Carrie Fisher

Love lost by one moment's explicit unfairness can't be won back by trying to justify it — Lynne Reid Banks

Asked whether donor nations may be becoming fatigued ... The fatigue may be there, but I don't think we can justify it in the face of such misery. We may need to wake up our conscience and our conscience must force us to act. — Kofi Annan

If you had ordered British troops to drive children and old people into gas chambers, none of whom had done anything wrong except they were the children of their parents, can you imagine British troops doing anything but mutiny against such orders?
"Well, as a matter of fact there were some Germans, soldiers, officers, priests, doctors, and ordinary civilians who refused to obey these orders and said, 'I am not going to do this because I would not like to live and have this on my conscience. I'm not going to push them into gas chambers and then say later I was under orders and justify it by saying they were going to be pushed in by someone anyhow, and I can't stop it and other people will push them more cruelly. Therefore, it's in their best interest that I shove them in gently.'
"You see, the trouble was, not enough of these people refused. — Leon Uris

But Mari, I just don't think I can justify a show-offish wedding. I've never been that sort of girl. I'm the 'Let's go to a third-world country and take care of orphans' kind of girl, you know? — Janice Thompson

I know this issue is very controversial. But unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a 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. We should rise above bitterness and reproach, and if Americans could come together in a spirit of understanding and helping, then we could find positive solutions to the tragedy of abortion. — Ronald Reagan

Writing blog posts is totally freeing in a whole new way for me. I'm not writing it for any editor, and I'm not being paid, so I can say whatever I want. I don't have to justify the cost of a book to readers; they get it for free, so expectations are naturally low. (And no one-star reviews!) — Kate Christensen

You can pass any law you like to make 'criminals' of those you don't like and then justify it with whatever stupid reasoning that appeals to you. Is that rule of law - or tyranny? — Christina Engela

When you experience discomfort in your body and a strong reaction to what's happening, and yet you choose not to express your emotions, you've probably convinced yourself of one of these myths to justify your choice: Myth 1: The other person can't handle it. (Yes she can. It's that you think you can't handle being in the presence of her emotional reaction.) Myth 2: It's not the "right" time to bring this up. (Ask yourself: Is the time really not right, or is it just that you feel uncomfortable?) Myth 3: It will make the situation worse. (Short term or long term? In the short term, some conflict may arise. In the long term, you'll move closer to honest conversations and feel empowered.) Myth 4: The other person might not like you anymore. (If she likes you because you don't speak your truth, it's not you she really likes.) Myth 5: If you ignore the issue, it will go away. (Left unaddressed, the conflict will likely grow in intensity.) — Neha Sangwan

Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain. — James Baldwin

Ugly's still ugly, no matter how you see it."
"An interesting assertion. Justify it."
"You bring twenty people in here," Adam told him, "and they'll all say the same thing. They'll all say you're ugly."
"Bring in twenty of me," Art said, "and we'd all say your ass is prettier than your face."
"There aren't twenty of you."
"No, you're right. I'm unique. So I can safely say that all androids find you ugly. Not all humans find me ugly. So, technically, I'm better looking than you, using objective criteria. — Bernard Beckett

148
When pushed hard enough to change himself, an individual typically answers: "I can't change the world", as if the change in the world was a prerequisite to justify his own changes. — Daniel Marques

We will be whatever they need us to be. Call us emo's, liars, and cheaters ... tell people how awful we are and how little talent we have ... do whatever it takes to make themselves feel better because at the end of the day, we are strong, we can take it. We don't need their approval to justify our lives. Each and every one of us has a fire that burns inside us and they can try like hell to put out that flame but as long as in our minds we know who we are meant to be, they don't stand a chance. — Andy Biersack

A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach, whether in structure or language or theme, to justify itself. — Chang-rae Lee

I think what we need is better understanding of how to do risk analysis of a CDO, but that they still can perform a very valuable function because they can aggregate these risks and pass them around so that mortgages or other kinds of loans can be packaged and sold to investors all over the world, who in most times, would justify a small amount of each one. — Robert F. Engle

And I don't like people who eat powdered doughnuts. I don't car how careful you are, they're just plain messy. I can't believe they taste good enough to justify getting that sugar all over everything, especially me. — Erin McKean

You don't love me, Sebastian. You don't have any idea what love really is. You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing. — Terry Goodkind

A frantic stream of words flows from us because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image. we fear so deeply what we think, other people see in us that we talk in order to straighten out their understanding ... one of the fruits of silence (or keeping your mouth shut) is the freedom to let God be our justifier. we don't need to straighten out others. when we can allow God to justify and set things right, that brings us to believe that God can care for us-reputation and all — Hayley DiMarco

Success in one role can't justify failure in another. — Stephen Covey

I turn my head a little. The radio's caroling "Tonight," velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria's song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago. But where is she now, where did she go, and what did I do with her?
Our paths ran along so close together they were almost like one, the one they were eventually going to be. Thin fear came along, fear entered into it somehow, and split them wide apart.
Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn't be answered, the door rings that wouldn't be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.
Now there aren't two paths anymore; there's only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

Often when you go into a relationship with someone you like, you have to justify why you like that person. You only see what you want to see and you deny there are things you don't like about that person. You lie to yourself just to make yourself right. Then you make assumptions, and one of the assumptions is "My love will change this person." But this is not true. Your love will not change anybody. If others change, it's because they want to change, not because you can change them. Then something happens between the two of you, and you get hurt. Suddenly you see what you didn't want to see before, only now it is amplified by your emotional poison. Now you have to justify your emotional pain and blame them for your choices. — Miguel Ruiz

I can't justify to myself working less, even if you get more out of it. Even though, in practice, it does seem it would be better for me personally. — Chael Sonnen

If you are uncertain or in confusion don't take any decisions. If you feel you can do something just feel it and do it.
you cannot justify your actions that you do for others when you are unstable.
People will feel for something all the time and you cannot make them happy anyway... — Giridhar Alwar

Real liars don't lie about anything," Hanna said. "They just lie. 'About' is a word liars use to justify their lying, to make it seem like a localized problem." "You've made quite a study," Grace said, trying to sound light and wry. "But I still don't know," Hanna said. "And that upsets me. With a liar, you can never know the whole truth, ever. You can't ever be sure that this version is the real version. There is no end, no bottom. Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a hoax. — Rebecca Scherm

It's a chicken-and-egg thing. You could send cards to everyone in San Francisco, but if the merchants don't have the terminals, what's the point? What you need is a cooperative effort with merchants in a metropolitan area to create a tipping point where you can justify advertising and merchants are willing to attempt this new payment system. — David Robertson

You can be a victim or you can be rich, but you can't be both. Listen up! Every time, and I mean every time, you blame, justify, or complain, you are slitting your financial throat. — T. Harv Eker

I want people to talk more. I mean, I watch Game of Thrones and there's all sorts of crazy nudity in it ... and very little of which I can justify, except that it's in a titillating and somewhat exploitational manner, but I don't really feel like that's a subject that people are interested in because it's the same news story. — Craig Zobel

I'm not such a nuisance to the world, and the kick I get out of living can, I suppose, justify the impositions I make on it. But when life isn't so fun, well, then I start to wonder. What's the point of going on if it's just trouble for us both? My friends will miss me, I am told. — Aaron Swartz

The base-superstructure metaphor when misunderstood as a causal rather than reciprocal relationship often leads to characterisations of historical materialism as determinist. The superstructure doesn't just reflect the base but has a reciprocal relation with the superstructure often enabling the base, i.e. the forces of production require property rights which are reliant upon political decisions at the level of the superstructure. The material base of every society is capped by an "ideological superstructure" that serves to legitimise and justify the arrangements and institutions in that society. It is from this superstructure that emanates ruling-class ideas and ultimately social consciousness, and thus we can see that the consciousness determined by the superstructure justifies and maintains the economic structure found in the base. — Anonymous

Now the valley cried with anger, "Mount your horses draw your sword." And they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward. Now they stood beside the treasure, on the mountain dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it. "Peace on earth" was all it said. Go ahead and hate your neighbor,go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day. On the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away. — Dennis Lambert

No. You can't work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works. What I do here, every day, for the rest of my life, is only my way of saying, 'Lord, regardless of what eternity holds for me, let me give something back to you. I know it doesn't even no scorecard. But let me make something of my life before I go.. and then, Lord, I'm at your mercy. — Mitch Albom

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

Envy shrugged. 'Can no value be found in good intentions?'
'What, precisely, are you trying to justify? And to me, or yourself?'
She glared, then quickened her pace. 'You're no fun at all,' she sniffed as she pulled
ahead, 'and presumptuous as well. I'm going to talk with Tool, his moods don't
swing!'
No, they just hang there, twisting in the wind. — Steven Erikson

You don't need to justify what I do. I do what I have to do to survive because that's all I know. I don't make excuses, I own it. This is me, this is who I am, this is my life. It shames me but not enough to stop. At one point, this was all about revenge; it was about getting the men who got my father and my mother. But somewhere along the way, I forgot about the beast. Vengeance is a beast, you know. It can be tamed. I just stopped feeding it. — Karina Halle

We want what we want. We don't need to justify it. And we can take it, we should. I want you, and I'm taking you. — Scott Lynch

Dying for the world is not noble in anyway but a disgrace for the rest of the world itself, for those that don't do absolutely anything to support, help or even bleed. It's like going to war alone, while our friends cheer and applaud from the distance. It's not fun and doesn't make me proud in any way. Most so-called spiritual people in this world, are not spiritual, they think they are but they're braindead, they are living their own fantasies, their own Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings Stories, but not truly bleeding for life. And so, it's quite interesting when my friends do all they can to stop me from leaving them, from changing country, while at the same time, they give me no reason to justify being attached to them. — Robin Sacredfire

Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing." — Sylvia Plath

When heuristics don't yield the results we expect, you'd think we would eventually realize that something's wrong. Even if we don't locate the biases, we should be able to see the discrepancy between what we wanted and what we got, right? Well, not necessarily. As it turns out, we have biases that support our biases! If we're partial to one option - perhaps because it's more memorable, or framed to minimize loss, or seemingly consistent with a promising pattern - we tend to search for information that will justify choosing that option. On the one hand, it's sensible to make choices that we can defend with data and a list of reasons. On the other hand, if we're not careful, we're likely to conduct an imbalanced analysis, falling prey to a cluster of errors collectively known as confirmation biases. — Sheena Iyengar

Feminism will be just as oppressive to women as the media if it compels us to change who we are. The ends will not justify the means. It is like a corset that, although originally intended to make us feel good, about ourselves, has been pulled so tight that we are not left with enough room to breathe. Feminism often seems to be looking down its nose at us these days, as it militantly tells us how to behave- focusing on appearances according to a male dominated society. Have they forgotten that it is the societal viewpoint which needs to be changed? Somewhere along the line this movement got off track.


After all, we are constantly being told how to look, how to age, how to eat, how to act. Can't we at least think what we want? — Nancy Madore

Time of course has showed the question up in all its young illogic. We can justify any apologia simply by calling life a successive rejection of personalities. No apologia I s any more than a romance - half a fiction - in which all the successive identities are taken on and rejected by the writer as a function of linear time are treated as separate characters. The writing itself even constitutes another rejection, another "character" added to the past. So we do sell our souls: paying them away to history in little installments. It isn't so much to pay for eyes clear enough to see past the fiction of continuity, the fiction of cause and effect, the fiction of a humanized history endowed with "reason. — Thomas Pynchon

Unlike most of life, what you do really matters. Your actions have real consequences. You have to pay attention and focus, and that's very satisfying. It forces you to pay great attention and you lose yourself in the task at hand. Without the risk, that wouldn't happen, so the risk is an essential part of climbing, and that's hard for some people to grasp. You can't justify the risk when things go wrong and people die. The greater the risk, the greater the reward in most aspects of life, and in climbing that's certainly true, too. It's very physical, you use your mind and your body. — Jon Krakauer

It's easy to point out someone else's mistake, harder to recognize your own. Especially because most people - except the lucky few like ourselves - are forced to live with their mistakes. So they learn to justify their mistakes, build on them, until they can look back and convince themselves that their mistake was inevitable all along, a good choice, in fact. An unwed teenage mother can look back at her unexpected pregnancy fondly six years down the road once the child's out of her hair and in school all day. She wouldn't dare go back and fix that mistake because it's become part of her life. — Andrea Lochen

I don't know how in the twenty-first century we can possibly justify not showing girls things that they can aspire to, and at the same time, how can we possibly be showing boys this narrow vision of what women are and what they can be. — Geena Davis

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions ... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. — Noam Chomsky

Because I'm a performer I can justify and sometimes sell the things about me that offend and shock the conventional world. I need to live life in the fast lane. I need to do things to excess. I need to go over the edge. I have an obligation to experience the things most people can't experience. The taboos. The things you're not supposed to know or do. That's part of my job. That's why I do it. I would probably do it anyway. — Elizabeth Ashley

I didn't hear words that were accurate, much less prideful. For example, I never once heard the word clitoris. It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function than to feel pleasure. (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it - and what it would be used to justify?) — Gloria Steinem

When we forgive someone, it doesn't justify what they've done. It releases them into God's hands so He can deal with them. — Stormie O'martian

Is this money well spent? This is taxpayer money, it is going to be adding to the deficit short term and if we can't justify it, then we're not going to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, just to make somebody happy, if it's not good for the economy. — Barack Obama

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position. — Gary Oldman

Intelligence reports say Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying. — Ronald Reagan

Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

How often in our lives have we withheld the truth from someone we're supposed to love? We justify it by telling ourselves we're doing them some kindness, when in reality, we're just being selfish. We don't want them to know the truth because if they did, well, they might not love us anymore. How many of us have ever felt that no one would love us if they knew the real us? Love bears all things, the Bible tells us. The truth is, everyone who really loves you can bear the real you. — Erin O'Riordan

You might want to do something about your neck."
I was totally lost. "My neck?"
She reached into her purse and handed me a compact mirror. I opened it and surveyed my neck, still trying to figure out what she could be talking about. Then I saw it. A small, brownish purple bruise on the side of my neck.
"What on earth is that?" I exclaimed.
Ms. Terwilliger snorted. "Although it's been a while for me, I believe the technical term is a hickey" She paused and arched an eyebrow. "You do know what that is, don't you?"
"Of course I know!" I lowered the mirror. "But there's no way - I mean, we barely - that is - "
She held up a hand to silence me. "You don't have to justify your private life to me. But you might want to consider how you can actually keep it private in the next fifteen minutes. — Richelle Mead

This compulsion to look back, to explain to myself, to others, why I did what I did - or, worse, to justify why I didn't do something else - is one of the most direct roads to depression we have. Our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, according to Dr. Andrew Weil in his book Healthy Aging, are "key determinants of how we age." They can threaten the quality of time we bring to the present. — Joan D. Chittister

I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any accepted standards whatever
any external reference which can give meaning to the statement that such and such a book is "good" or "bad"
every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One's real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually "I like this book" or "I don't like it" and what follows is a rationalisation. — George Orwell

Sometimes I hear news about the huge dollars involved with CEO pay and corporate-management salaries, and I'm mystified at how someone can justify taking that much at the cost of other people's livelihoods. In a bizarre way, I'm almost kind of curious, like "How can they absolve themselves and enjoy their wealth?" I don't understand it. — Eddie Vedder

You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence, if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you're not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of very much use to yourself. — George Bernard Shaw

Holmes. "Why, it might be a description of Watson!" "It's true," said the inspector, with amusement. "It might be a description of Watson." "Well, I'm afraid I can't help you, Lestrade," said Holmes. "The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and that I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge. No, it's no use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case." Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who — Arthur Conan Doyle

We increasingly justify such heightened involvement with our children as essential to their survival. We keep them on speed dial. We watch them on Skype. We track their movements. We expect every call to be answered, every changed plan reported. We fantasize unprecedented new dangers in their every unsupervised encounter. We mention terrorism, we share anxious admonitions: "It's different now." "It's not the way it was." "You can't let them do what we did. — Joan Didion

You can't say there shouldn't be poisonous serpents - that's the way life is. But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That's not saying no to the serpent. That's saying no to that situation. So let's accept what must be accepted, without letting our acceptance justify inaction. — Eric Greitens

It may be argued that, at least so far as work is concerned, what I call my addictions have benefited other people. Even if that were true, it still wouldn't explain or justify addiction. The contributions I have made in a number of areas that I am passionate about could have been achieved without the addictive zeal that often drove me. There is no such thing as a good addiction. Everything a person can do is better done if there is no addictive attachment that pollutes it. For every addiction - no matter how benign or even laudable it seems from the outside - someone pays a price. — Gabor Mate

There are things that have to be done and you do them and you never talk about them. You don't try to justify them. They can't be justified. You just do them. Then you forget it. — Mario Puzo

It takes real feelings to create the illusion that others have power to offend and anger us.
Projecting such interpretations upon everything around us is in many ways like living in a box of our own making ... you might think of these walls as a falsification of reality
a distorted way of seeing, feeling, and thinking about other people that makes them seem offensive or malicious or otherwise untrustworthy. Remember, the people are really there, but we all ourselves off from the truth about them by the false way we picture them ...
Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended. — C. Terry Warner

I guess I'm more interested in why people feel they have to believe in God. Why can't it just be science? Science is wondrous. The night sky? Amazing. The inside of a human cell? Incredible. Something that tells us we're born bad and that people use to justify all their petty prejudices and awfulness? I dunno. I guess I believe in science. Science is enough. — Nicola Yoon

The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance. — Ron Paul

I'm avoiding having an assistant because then I would become the horrible boss. I can't justify having an assistant as a 25-year-old; I just can't do it! — John Francis Daley

A lot of actors say that no villain wants to be a villain, generally. They don't might being evil, maybe, but they have an agenda that they can justify. Otherwise, a little bit of that tension goes, if you're just a villain and everyone hates you because you're mean. — Liam McIntyre

In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked? — David Cameron

better now. And a bit like an idiot." "Why?" "It's like you said. He was just using me. It's so obvious." I see a strange twist in Corey's demeanor, and realize with surprise that he's going to start defending Nathan - not for Nathan's sake, but so that I can justify feeling fooled rather than stupid. "I don't know. Sounds — Aubrey Parker

Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!"
" But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity ... — Kenzaburo Oe

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

Happiness is overrated and money can't justify it. — Benjamin Clementine