Do Not Justify Quotes & Sayings

Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge
that because she was injured, she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint ... — Jane Austen

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

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. — T. S. Eliot

I was right outside the NSA [on 9/11], so I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio, 'the plane's hitting,' and I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it ... I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort-of scandalize our memories to sort-of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through
and to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up, and that our Constitution says we should not give up. — Edward Snowden

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. — Joan Didion

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other. — Lord Acton

No degree of prosperity could justify
the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to
make safe and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or
even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself,
a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime perpetrated by man.
The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economical affairs of man
as if people did not matter at all. — E.F. Schumacher

Evil is not likely to result where people firmly believe that ends do not justify the means. — Roy Baumeister

Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification. When we began working on this book, the poster boy for "tenacious clinging to a discredited belief" was George W. Bush. Bush was wrong in his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was wrong in claiming that Saddam was linked with Al Qaeda, he was wrong in predicting that Iraqis would be dancing joyfully in the streets to receive the American soldiers, he was wrong in predicting that the conflict would be over quickly, he was wrong in his gross underestimate of the financial cost of the war, and he was most famously wrong in his photo-op speech six weeks after the invasion began, when he announced (under a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended. — Carol Tavris

The question may arise - how can credible Christian organizations justify and condone meditative practices that clearly resemble Eastern meditation? As pointed out earlier in this book, Christian terminology surrounds these practices. It only takes a few popular Christian leaders with national profiles to embrace a teaching that sounds Christian to bring about big changes in the church. Moreover, we have many trusting Christians who do not use the Scriptures to test the claims of others. Building an entire prayer method around an out-of-context verse or two is presumptuous, at best. Now more than ever, it is critical that Christians devote themselves to serious Bible study and discernment regarding this issue. — Ray Yungen

Don't try to justify yourself on the ground that somebody must do this kind of work. Let "somebody," not yourself, take the responsibility ... Many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation because there was money in it. — Orison Swett Marden

Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision. — Criss Jami

What we once thought of as necessary and proper reasons for ostracizing and marginalizing gay people, we now understand do not justify that kind of oppression. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

We will always have enough reasons to justify what we believe and what we do not believe. — M.F. Moonzajer

To be in Lyonesse, that is the question
To justify the otters, is the question
The dropping of the meadows, is the question

I do not know the answer to the question

There was a time when moorhens in the west
There was a time when daylight on the top
There was a time when God was not a question

There was a time when poets

Then I came — Laurence Lerner

The first question we must address deals with optimism, the possibility of achieving our goal. Are we in a position where we can actually hope to effect change? Assuming we become convinced that there are reasons for optimism, we move to the next question. Are we cetain that we want change? The stories about EHMs, jackals, and suffering around the globe strike raw nerves, but now we demand absolute proof that our grievances justify the efforts change will demand. Third: Is there a unifying principle that will validate our efforts? We look to ascertain that we are not merely seeking to impose our moral, religious, or philosophical values on others but instead are intent on creating something of true and lasting universal benefit. And finally: What can we each do? You and I personally need to evaluate our talents and passions. What are our individual options and desires? How do they fit into the bigger picture? — John Perkins

Once upon a time, one looked to society
or class, or community
for one's normative vocabulary: what was good for everyone was by definition good for anyone. But the converse does not hold. What is good for one person may or may not be of value or interest to another. Conservative philosophers of an earlier age understood this well, which was why they resorted to religious language and imagery to justify traditional authority and its claims upon each individual.
But the individualism of the new Left respected neither collective purpose nor traditional authority: it was, after all, both new and left. What remained to it was the subjectivism of private
and privately-measured
interest and desire. This, in turn, invited a resort to aesthetic and moral relativism: if something is good for me it is not incumbent upon me to ascertain whether it is good for someone else
much less to impose it upon them ("do your own thing"). — Tony Judt

I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart. — Leo Tolstoy

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don't work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It's actions that show who we are. — Chelsey Philpot

If the boundaries of the self are defined by what we feel, then those who cannot feel even for themselves shrink within their own boundaries, while those who feel for others are enlarged, and those who feel compassion for all beings must be boundless. They are not separate, not alone, not lonely, not vulnerable in the same way as those of us stranded in the islands of ourselves, but they are vulnerable in other ways. Still, that sense of the dangers in feeling for others is so compelling that many withdraw, and develop elaborate stories to justify withdrawal, and then forget that they have shrunk. Most of us do, in one way or another. — Rebecca Solnit

Most sites need to prevent breadth - many many pages that are organized cohesively. A site that presents a single webpage is unlikely to present sufficient depth of content to justify extensive SEO.
The SCO trick is to draw traffic with desirable content, and to 'seduce' the traffic into portions of the site that may not directly have anything to do with the content - this is the ultimate goal of the SEO campaign. — Harold Davis

So, then, why is performance-based living a problem, and why do so many of us need to recover from it? Because the term performance-based living indicates that performance has become our primary measure of worth, value, or acceptance. Performance-based Christians attempt to relate to God based on performance and self-justification. Such behavior is not only nonsense, it is deadly! It is deadly because it is impossible. Therefore, either our God will justify us, or we will never be justified! But now we know that it is his determined purpose and will to be our Justifier. — Jeff Harkin

No group can survive, let alone thrive, unless what is good for the overall community is more important than individual freedom. Take, for example, resource allocation. How can anyone with any intelligence possibly justify, in terms of the overall community, the accumulation and hoarding of enormous material assets by a few individuals when others do not even have food, clothing, and other essentials?" In — Arthur C. Clarke

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

We are shocked by thieves taking pride in their clever touch, prostitutes in their depravity and murderers in their callousness. But it is shocking only because the atmosphere of the circles they move in is restricted, and - what matters most - we are on the outside. But isn't the same thing happening when rich men take pride in their wealth (which is theft), military commanders in their victories (which are murder) and rulers in their power (which is violence)? We do not see them as people who corrupt the concept of life, or good and evil, in order to justify their own situation, but only because the circles of people who share these corrupt concepts are wider, and we belong to them. — Leo Tolstoy

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

Lao-tzu, that master of the law of reversed effort, who declared that those who justify themselves do not convince, that to know truth one must get rid of knowledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness - from which men shrink. — Alan W. Watts

They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves. Not always, but at least occasionally, it can break our obsession with the self. — Kiran Nagarkar

No matter how much I tried to justify the affair, the fact remained that I was a deceitful person. One moment I was making out with a man and an hour later I was in bed with another man. Who had I become? What had I lost in life that led me to do this? Did I not have a perfect life? Was I not happy? Of course, I was happy. I knew I was happy and content. Had I become greedy? I was in a maze and I could not find a way out. — Jagdish Joghee

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor. — Neil Gaiman

I'm still here, Ash. I can justify and explain my actions, but Maca's not and I'll never do that to him. — Lesley Jones

Compared with the male benchmark, women are represented as more community minded and pacifist. When political women discuss why women are needed in politics in discourses that support the assumption that women are active primarily in these spheres, they contribute to the normalisation of dominant discourses of femininity. If women bring a 'women's perspective' to politics, what do men bring? This is a question that is rarely posed. Men are the norm, and women are the 'other'. Men do not need to justify their presence : it is taken for granted. — Emma Dalton

We are blind to the fact that what we do to them deprives them of their rights; we do not want to see this because we profit from it, and so we make use of what are really morally irrelevant differences between them and ourselves to justify the difference in treatment. — Cass R. Sunstein

As soon as a person indicates that they are willing to absorb guilt, a manipulator will stick to that person like glue and feed on their energy. This dynamic can be avoided simply by refusing to take on feelings of guilt. You do not have to justify yourself to anyone and you do not owe anybody anything. If you are to blame for something then you can accept the punishment, as long as you do not get stuck in the position of the guilty party afterwards. You do not owe those close to you anything either; after all, you care about them because you love them not because you have been coerced into doing so. This is a completely different matter. If you have a tendency to justify yourself, start letting go of it; once manipulative individuals realize they no longer have a way of hooking into your energy they will leave you alone. Guilt goes — Vadim Zeland

It's said that people who give excuses for the reason not do something always formulate those excuses, waiting for the reason to surface to justify their excuses! — Israelmore Ayivor

The exaggerated faith in small samples is only one example of a more general illusion - we pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than the data justify. Jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality. Statistics produce many observations that appear to beg for causal explanations but do not lend themselves to such explanations. Many facts of the world are due to chance, including accidents of sampling. Causal explanations of chance events are inevitably wrong. — Daniel Kahneman

We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole ... But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X. — Paul Klee

He wandered among the tanks for a long time, and often came back with her to the laboratory and the aquaria, submitting his physicist's arrogance to those small strange lives, to the existence of beings to whom present is eternal, beings that do not explain themselves and need not ever justify their ways to man. — Ursula K. Le Guin

A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means ... — Paulo Coelho

What is the bottom line for the animal/human hierarchy? I think it is at the animate/inanimate line, and Carol Adams and others are close to it: we eat them. This is what humans want from animals and largely why and how they are most harmed. We make them dead so we can live. We make our bodies out of their bodies. Their inanimate becomes our animate. We justify it as necessary, but it is not. We do it because we want to, we enjoy it, and we can. We say they eat each other, too, which they do. But this does not exonerate us; it only makes us animal rather than human, the distinguishing methodology abandoned when its conclusions are inconvenient or unpleasant. The place to look for this bottom line is the farm, the stockyard, the slaughterhouse. I have yet to see one run by a nonhuman animal. — Catherine Mackinnon

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge. — Paulo Coelho

I think in general the ends do not justify the means. — Howard Dean

The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him. — Benjamin Constant

While personal income in the U.S. more than doubled between i 96o and the 19gos in constant dollars, the proportion of people saying they are very happy remained a steady 30 percent. One conclusion that the findings seem to justify is that beyond the threshold of poverty, additional resources do not appreciably improve the chances of being happy. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

People do not take actions based on logic. We make choices based on emotion. Every one of us. Then we use what we call logic to justify our choices. — Kameron Hurley

Whatever defamation of character my enemies are spreading about me, I do not feel the need to justify myself toward them. While discretion obliges me to remain silent, my duty compels me to prevent them from doing any more harm. — Toussaint Louverture

The reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do but because I articulate and justify what you want to do. — Azar Nafisi

Love your sport. Never do it to please someone else; it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work. Compete against yourself, not others, for that is who is truly your best competition. — Peggy Fleming

Are you asking me if I did something to deserve Gem tripping me and calling me a whore, a slut, and a fat ugly bitch? Seriously? You are asking me that?"

"The answer is no. I have not touched a single guy in this school or actually pretty much ever, not that that would justify a fellow student calling me a whore or a slut. And as for the 'fat ugly bitch'? I presume that's subjective." . . .
"Do you need my BMI? I'm sure that can be arranged. — Julie Buxbaum

I fought linotype and montype for some time because it would not justify as well as handset could be made to do; but at last, as always happens, the machine outdid the hand, and got all the best types on it. — George Bernard Shaw

Julia's fears of coming forward with the violence were based on anticipated as well as actual responses from friends and acquaintances. I also recognized Julia's introverted and moody side, but I knew she wasn't capable of inciting her husband to kick, choke, and lock her in her home like an animal. Besides, considering how she was being treated, it was not surprising that she seemed moody, sensitive, even depressed. More important, nothing any woman could do could justify such behavior. — Susan Weitzman

Do not look only at yourself, and you will see much. Do not justify yourself, and you will be distinguished. Do not brag, and you will have merit. Do not be prideful, and your work will endure. — Laozi

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God's word to justify bigotry and persecution. — Joyce Meyer

Sometimes, for the sake of the larger good, one has to do things that may not appear right at the time. Perhaps, a laudable end can justify some questionable means. — Amish Tripathi

Heaven and happiness do not exist. That is your parents' way to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the tough reality, this slaughterhouse we've come to die in, if not to kill and to eat the animals, our fellow creatures. Therefore, do not reproduce, do not repeat the crimes committed against you, do not give back the same, evil paid with evil, as imposing life is the ultimate crime. Do not disturb the unborn, let them be in the peace of nothingness. Anyway we'll all eventually go back there, so why beat around the bush? — Fernando Vallejo

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

A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence
often the sole evidence offered
of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions. — Thomas Sowell

Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. — Byron White

Today's review covers the following ideas: 1. (65) 'My only function is the one that God gives to me.' The only function that I have is the one of forgiving that God gives to me. Recognizing this releases me from all conflict, because I have only one goal. With only one purpose, I always know what to do, what to say, and what to think. All doubt disappears as I acknowledge that my only function is the one that God gives to me. 2. Specific applications might take this form: 'The personal mind's perception of this does not change my function.' 'This does not give me a function that replaces the one that God gives to me.' 'I will not use this to justify a function that God does not give to me.' 3. (66) 'My Happiness and my function are One.' All that comes from God is One. What comes from Oneness, I must receive as One. Fulfilling my function is my — Elizabeth A. Cronkhite

I am too sick to work and haven't money enough to last 2 months and pay income tax. I want to keep going but do not see quite how, and there is no alternative - rather than justify my mother's 25-year dread of my "coming back on her, sick", I must kill myself. If she has to pay funeral costs, at least she will cut them to the bone and I will not be here to endure her martyrdom and prolong it by living. — Rose Wilder Lane

Seeing when you justify yourself and when you blame others is not a reason to criticize yourself, but actually an opportunity to recognize what all people do and how it imprisons us in a very limited perspective of this world. — Pema Chodron

The Christian must therefore walk in the middle path, and set these two classes of men before his eyes. He may meet with hardened and obstinate ceremonialists, who, like deaf adders, refuse to listen to the truth of liberty, and cry up, enjoin, and urge on us their ceremonies, as if they could justify us without faith. Such were the Jews of old, who would not understand, that they might act well. These men we must resist, do just the contrary to what they do, and be bold to give them offence, lest by this impious notion of theirs they should deceive many along with themselves. Before the eyes of these men it is expedient to eat flesh, to break fasts, and to do in behalf of the liberty of faith things which they hold to be the greatest sins. — Martin Luther

It's very juicy to twirl your mustache and figure out why people do the horrible things that they do. It's not just because they are evil, but because that's how they somehow explain the world to themselves and justify themselves. It's always interesting figuring out how that happens. — Zeljko Ivanek

Financially, I do not need to work unless I want to, and whatever film I accept has to be right for me in the sense that it should justify the time I spend away from my husband and kids. — Kajol

Men do not know why they award fame to one work of art rather than another. Without being in the faintest connoisseurs, they think to justify the warmth of their commendations by discovering it in a hundred virtues, whereas the real ground of their applause is inexplicable
it is sumpathy. — Thomas Mann

The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all intelligences do. If we do not act on higher motivations, then we can justify any action, no matter how horrible, as necessary for our survival. We are endlessly caught between the need for high moral absolutes - which will fail enough that any absolute can be demonstrated as false - and our tendency for individual judgments to degenerate into self-gratifying and unethical narcissism. Trying to force absolutes on others results in death and destruction, yet failing to act beyond one's self also leads to death and destruction, generally a lot sooner. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

What justifies specifically churchly exegesis of Scripture? Can church doctrine guide our reading? Why should it? Why should we interpret the story of Abraham and Isaac by the passion of Jesus? The answer is bluntly simple: What justifies churchly reading of Scripture is that there is no other way to read it, since "it" dissolves under other regimes. Thus a hermeneutical exhortation from this first perspective. Be entirely blatant and unabashed in reading Scripture for the church's purposes and within the context of Christian faith and practice. Indeed, guide your reading by church doctrine. For if, say, the doctrine of Trinity and Matthew's construal of the passion do not fit each other, then the church lost its diachronic self in the early fourth century at the latest, and the whole enterprise of Bible reading is moot. The question, after all, is not whether churchly reading of Scripture is justified; the question is, what could possibly justify any other? — Ellen F. Davis

It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law ... — Otto Weininger

Do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russian has always come for their money. And when they come - do not rely on an agreement signed by you, you are supposed to justify. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russian is to play fair, or do not play. — Otto Von Bismarck

But, of course, we cannot choose. We can only try to cope. That is what one does with sorrow, with tragedy, with any misfortune. We do not try to explain it. We do not try to explain it. We do not justify it by telling ourselves that we somehow deserve it. We do not even accept it. We survive it. We recognize its unfairness and defiantly choose to go on living. — Harold S. Kushner

When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated. — H. L. Richardson

What sets our species apart is not just what men will do to other men, but how tirelessly they justify it. — William Dietrich

Q. But it seems to me there are circumstances that simply induce one to have negative emotions!
A. This is one of the worst illusions we have. We think that negative emotions are produced by circumstances, whereas all negative emotions are in us, inside us. This is a very important point. We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else's action or some circumstance should produce a negative emotion in me. It is only my weakness. No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way we do not struggle with them. — P.D. Ouspensky

For the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it's so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble ... grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it's the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters. — Greg Rucka

Men's ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men's rule over them. They do not represent 'truth' but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology. — Sheila Jeffreys

Clients do not expect the infrastructure to be any less reliable just because the service is being delivered from an offshore location; thus, the uptime requirements justify the expense. — Sanjay Kumar

Mistakes and slips are a necessary evil part of our daily living. We learn through them all the time. Life is too broad for us to do everything so perfectly, but we must not justify our mistakes and slips when we know that we are far better than our mistakes! The best regret is to take a robust action in the right direction to prove how far better we are than our mistakes and slips. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse - when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends. — Barack Obama

She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness. — D.E. Stevenson

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

Some fish were jumping up the beach and into the tree, which struck me as an odd thing for a fish to do, but I tried not to be judgmental about it. I was feeling pretty raw about my own species, and not much inclined to raise a quizzical eyebrow at others. The fish could play about in trees as much as they liked if it gave them pleasure, so long as they didn't try and justify themselves or tell each other it was a malign god who made them play in trees. — Douglas Adams

When dealing with a difficult person, all that matters from a spiritual standpoint is how you react and treat the person. It's not about getting the other person to change or agree with you. Your spiritual growth is all about the way that YOU deal with the relationship, the person, and the situation. Even if the situation would justify you acting harshly, resist this temptation. Ask for heaven to purify and uplift your thoughts and feelings so that everything you do and say is aligned with Divine Love. This is the path and purpose of the lightworker. This is why you are here. — Doreen Virtue

When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims
national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil. — Benjamin Netanyahu

There may be hostility and ambivalence, there may even be no responses and those are the worst because it means people do not care. Yet all of these are part of the parcel of land that we call human experience and spirituality. The deep lows and pinnacled heights as well as the wonderful things in what one priest called the lowlands of mundania. This book is not for you if you are looking for hatred on atheists, religionists or just looking for reasons to justify yourself. — Leviak B. Kelly

It is evil to justify killing (unborn babies) by the happy outcome of eternity for the one killed. This same justification could be used to justify killing one-year olds, or any heaven-bound believer for that matter. The Bible asks the question: "Shall we sin that grace may abound?" (Romans 6:1) And: "Shall we do evil that good may come?" (Romans 3:8). In both cases the answer is a resounding NO. It is presumption to step into God's place and try to make the assignments to heaven or to hell. Our duty is to obey God, not to play God. — John Piper

I don't like memoirs. I think they're self-serving, and people use them to settle scores, and I really tried not to do that. You have to have a really interesting life to justify memoir, and my life has been pretty ho-hum. — Sally Mann

The ends do not justify the means — Seth

My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God's word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth. — John Piper

But a communal approach is not enough. According to Professor Bowles, the second thing women must do is provide a legitimate explanation for the negotiation.21 Men don't have to legitimize their negotiations; they are expected to look out for themselves. Women, however, have to justify their requests. — Sheryl Sandberg

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

The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and interest of it, not because we can justify its place on the mental spreadsheet or accounting ledger (like the one Benjamin Franklin kept) by which we tote up the value of our actions. — Alan Jacobs

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

I strongly oppose cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means. — George W. Bush

Pain may be the only reality but if mankind had any sense it would pursue the delusion called happiness. All the philosophers and poets who tell us that pain and suffering have a place and purpose in the cosmic order of things are welcome to them. They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves. — Kiran Nagarkar

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

Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in "justice" or in affirmation of "rights" or in defense of "peace" do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation. — Wendell Berry

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

If I should say that he is a victim of injustice, then I would be asking by implication for sympathy; and if one insists upon looking at this boy as a victim of injustice, he will be swamped by a feeling of guilt so strong as to be indistinguishable from hate. Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds; but, failing that, and seeing no immediate solution that will set things right without too much cost to their lives and property, they will kill that which evoked in them, the condemning sense of guilt. And this is true of all men- whether they be white or black -it is a peculiar and powerful, but common need. — Richard Wright

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