Justifications Quotes & Sayings

When I did 'Babe' I wanted to talk about animal rights without going through some convoluted justifications about using animal products. — James Cromwell

A hundred words put together to formulate an excuse will never resolve a conflict, political justifications are silly lies. — Auliq Ice

She felt justified in hurting him, because he had hurt her...but now all her justifications fell away like dead butterflies... — Lauren Myracle

A lie is my attempt to tamper with the truth so that I need not face the truth. Yet as shrewd as I think myself to be, I would be wise to understand that God designed truth as ultimately tamper-proof. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made. — Christopher Hitchens

Make sure that your heartfelt thanksgiving is more consistent than your nagging needs and your passionate apology fervent than your unhealthy justifications. Be clean and hopeful. — Israelmore Ayivor

Although one of the key justifications for the Vietnam war was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat was to produce nothing of the kind: apart from the fact that Cambodia and Laos became embroiled, the effects were essentially confined to Vietnam. — Martin Jacques

The Ark was a humble piece of religious furniture which originally contained the covenant itself. It was dear to the Israelites, reminding them of their lowly origins, and standing for the pristine orthodoxy and purity of their theocratic creed. The Bible account gives later justifications for David's failure to build a temple for it: God would not allow him, as he was above all a warrior, a 'man of blood'; it was also said that he was too busy making war.172 — Paul Johnson

If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications. — Lennie James

As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our concern for human rights. In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense. They were notorious not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression but for enthusiastic justifications of slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, genocide. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities," Leto said. "This ... rhetorical despotism, Lord?" "Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil. — Frank Herbert

Once you start offering reasons for ignoring the interests of others, however, reasoning itself will usually draw you into a kind of universality. A reason is an offer of a ground for thinking or feeling or doing something. And it isn't a ground for me, unless it's a ground for you. If someone really thinks that some group of people genuinely doesn't matter at all, he will suppose they are outside the circle of those to whom justifications are due. — Kwame Anthony Appiah

Apparently rational justifications will never explain all sorts of the different feelings and raw emotions art invoke in people. — Cristiane Serruya

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity. — George Henry Lewes

For too long the ideal role of the individual in our society - the role the talented young have aspired to almost by convention - has been that of the specialist. It has surely become as plain as it needs to be that what we need most now are not the specialists with their narrowed vision and short-range justifications, but men of sympathy and imagination and free intelligence who can recognize and hold themselves answerable to the complex responsibilities of a man's life in the world. — Wendell Berry

Abusiveness can be thought of as a recipe that involves a consistent set of ingredients: control, entitlement, disrespect, excuses, and justifications (including victim blaming) - elements that are always present, often accompanied by physical intimidation or violence. — Lundy Bancroft

But the justifications of the family farm are not merely agricultural; they are political and cultural as well. The question of the survival of the family farm and the farm family is one version of the question of who will own the country, which is, ultimately, the question of who will own the people. Shall the usable property of our country be democratically divided, or not? Shall the power of property be a democratic power, or not? If many people do not own the usable property, then they must submit to the few who do own it. They cannot eat or be sheltered or clothed except in submission. They will find themselves entirely dependent on money; they will find costs always higher, and money always harder to get. To renounce the principle of democratic property, which is the only basis of democratic liberty, in exchange for specious notions of efficiency or the economics of the so-called free market is a tragic folly. There — Wendell Berry

Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it's not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications and a million reasons why we can't/shouldn't/won't do what we know we need to do. — Steven Pressfield

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds
justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. — Anne Rice

The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster. — Patrick Ness

In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? — Alan Lightman

You can rationalize anything, but that is not total honesty, only your version of it based on your upbringing and experiences outside of everyone else's reality. — Shannon L. Alder

As the Internet breaks down the last justifications for a professional class of politicians, it also builds up the tools for replacing them. — Aaron Swartz

Van Gogh: It is precisely in learning to suffer without complaining,29 learning to consider pain without repugnance, that one risks vertigo a little; and yet it might be possible, yet one glimpses even a vague probability that on the other side of life we'll glimpse justifications for pain, which seen from here sometimes takes up the whole horizon so much that it takes on the despairing proportions of a deluge. — Liesbeth Heenk

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification. — Thomas Szasz

You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts. — Cheryl Strayed

If it were profitable to have indentured servants in the modern world, I'm sure that Richard Scaife's think tanks would have no trouble finding justifications, and assorted Christian groups would explain why it's God's will. — Paul Krugman

I love it when my justifications for avoiding housework are actually legitimate. — Julie Kenner

The missiles come first, and the justifications come second. — E.P. Thompson

They were such seriously futile people that she found herself wanting to cry out against their ready-made justifications for pointless lives. — Frank Herbert

It shouldn't surprise us that members of the same culture that gave us capitalism as the dominant economic model - based as it is on the insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy human communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot) - would give us variants of the selfish gene theory as the dominant biological model - based as it is on the equally insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy natural communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot). Both are justifications for what the dominant culture does: steal from everyone else. Absent — Derrick Jensen

Widespread justification formulate the most significant obstacles on the way to achieving a dream — Sunday Adelaja

I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place. — Iain M. Banks

I wish I could say I was a victim but I willingly played into the devil's hands. My reasons weren't always right and my justifications weren't just, but my weaknesses were common. — Jimmy Gleacher

If you put forward arguments and justifications when you are annoyed, you give out more information to your opponent — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It's very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words 'heroes.' I feel ... uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. — Chris Hayes

We delude ourselves when we suppose than the main impact of speech lies in the words (as opposed to the voice), just as we delude ourselves when we cite logical reasons, which are actually rationalizations or justifications, for our decisions. — Charles Eisenstein

We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the authority to insist upon it; we want more community without any limitations to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms that we want it. — James Davison Hunter

If we were to behave half as well as we believe others ought to behave, we might prove ourselves as grand in character as excuses and justifications prevent us from being. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Stable husbanding of the land requires community-wide language and norms for resolving interpersonal conflict, facilitating barter and trade, determining shares of work and output and maintaining organizational hierarchies. Although such social functions are the requisites of community life everywhere, the ways of performing them evolve differently from place to place. Each society develops its practices and sets of myths, symbols and rational justifications, which usually are held to be superior to those of other societies.
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And just as material reasons for self-sufficiency can turn communities towards economic imperialism, so the ideational justifications for autonomy can turn them into presumptuous civilizers of other peoples. — Seyom Brown

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses."
"Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted.
"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing. — Iain M. Banks

Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon b, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental missiles , military space platforms and nuclear weapons? If memory serves it was not the Vatican. — David Berlinski

Although it should be avoided, you can break promises to people if you have to - because you can explain circumstances and make reasonable justifications and compromises with people. Dogs take you at your word - that's a lot to live up to - and I, for one, do not want to be the kind of person who reneges on a good-faith deal with a dog. — Wade Rouse

Apologies require taking full responsibility. No half-truths, no partial admissions, no rationalizations, no finger pointing, and no justifications belong in any apology. — Cathy Burnham Martin

history is one sided, none of the stories are wholly true. We only hear the stories the victor wants told. The remaining stories, the plights, justifications and heroics of the losers are gone with time. Ours is such a history. We are stronger, yet rarely — H.K. Savage

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

Fuzzy and ideological definitions of terrorism just make it easier to kill people. When you know your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that's terrorism. And it must be clearly named as unacceptable - no matter who does it (individuals, groups, or states), whatever the weapons, the expressed intentions, or political justifications. — Jim Wallis

when sex is conceptualized as a need, it creates an environment that fosters men's sense of sexual entitlement. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book Half the Sky illustrates how the assumption that boys require outlets to "relieve their sexual frustrations" facilitates the sexual enslavement of impoverished girls. If you think of sex as a drive, like hunger or thirst, that has to be fed for survival, if you think that men in particular - with their 75 percent spontaneous desire - need to relieve their pent-up sexual energy, then you can invent justifications for any strategy a man might use to relieve himself. Because if sex is a drive, like hunger, then potential partners are like food. Or like animals to be hunted for food. — Emily Nagoski

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The fucking angels of memory were out. They had come out of their museums, out of their castles. They'd gone to war against whatever this incoming to-come was. The very facts of retrospection and fate that had various sides fighting were now out themselves, personified or apotheosed and smacking seven bells out of each other directly No longer solely reasons, justifications, teloi, casus belli for others to invoke or believe in: now combatants. The war had just got meta. — China Mieville

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets. — Kahlil Gibran

What we have invented, Hans, is a new religion. Oh, not the moralistic and old-fashioned theological kind with that God who does not want us, but one with brutal splendours, magnificent contemporary rites and rituals, scenes, gestures, sacrifices, humiliations, terrors, tremblings, mortifications, degradations, phantasmagoric transfigurations into other realms of feeling, new realisations that will come from this cleansing purge, and then transcendencies unto a New World of our own making, with our own new rules and rewards and justifications. — Larry Kramer

Winners don't believe in justifications — Mohammed Sekouty

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one. — Daniel M. Gilbert

What does it matter if another player, your friend or rival, intended good things and had only your interests at heart, if the effects of his action lead to so much ruin and confusion? It is only natural for people to cover up their actions with all kinds of justifications, always assuming that they have acted out of goodness. You must learn to inwardly laugh each time you hear this and never get caught up in gauging someone's intentions and actions through a set of moral judgments that are really an excuse for the accumulation of power. — Robert Greene

We need a few trusted naysayers in our lives, critics who are willing to puncture our protective bubble of self-justifications and yank us back to reality if we veer too far off. This is especially important for people in positions of power. — Carol Tavris

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights ... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide ... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality ... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Maybe it's better to adhere to the standards of heaven than to those of this world. Failure doesn't upset you, since you can always rely on eternity; you find your justifications in reasons beyond yourself. Personal loss is less important. And pain. And men. And the present day. Everything continues into eternity, faceless and vast, sleepily torpid and solemnly indifferent. Like the sea: it cannot lament the innumerable deaths that continually occur in it. — Mesa Selimovic

If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truth - as the metaphor of "the marketplace of ideas" suggests - we should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens. The same is true of democratic justifications for free speech. If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source. — Thomas Healy

Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks - all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them. — Steven Erikson

Religious fundamentalism, magical thinking and self-delusion, have been justifications for some of the most horrific atrocities in human history. — Bryant McGill

When DEATH stares in our faces..
We can just 'stare' back at it!
'All' falls flat in the deathly moments!
No explanations, no reasons, no justifications sound good enough!! Acceptance alone stands out as the truth! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

If we're all led to believe that poverty is just a matter of laziness or stupidity or whatever other justifications we can come up with, then we're not likely to be in a real position to do much about it when it comes to attacking the root cause of the problem. Instead of demanding a more equitable system for the distribution of social and economic goods, we blame the victim. This is insidious, because ideology is something we carry around with us in our heads; it forms the basis of our day-to-day understanding of the world. — Bob Torres

You need to face, you need to confront, and really properly look at what's happening, and not try and explain it away or give it justifications or anything, because at this juncture, we still, by our finger nails, have the chance to make a difference, and turn this around. And to not take part and to just watch ... ... .., but if you don't push back, if you don't face it and confront it for what it is, it'll just takeover, and then no one will be free. — Vivian Kubrick

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." More important, all of Jefferson's specific digs at the king were preceded by one self-evident fact that obliterated any and all justifications for monarchy, aristocracy, and colonialism until the end of time, even though neither its author nor his comrades truly believed it: All men are created equal. A — Sarah Vowell

I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that. — Chris Hayes

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment. — Jonathan Haidt

Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action. — Leo Tolstoy

Over-reliance on strictly economic justifications has already begun to hurt the quality and range of education at every level of American life. — Charles Vest

Winners see the dream and develop plans while the rest see the obstacles and develop justifications. — Orrin Woodward

She had missed him for a while, missed his warm smile and tender yet expert touch. But she had also welcomed the absence of the invisible leash which had tugged her back to Earth more often than she liked, which had whispered of duties to another and required explanations and justifications for every excursion. And eventually even the good memories had faded into the background, replaced by the thrill of new endeavors. — G.S. Jennsen

Reason is an outcome of frailty and resentment. When Will fails to cope with the labour of life, or the life of labour, its fragile remnants are set to construct a slighter world of justifications. — Raheel Farooq

If this incomplete ayaan hirsi wants fame sooo much then she shouldn't use religion as a base to be known. Some people justify their in justifications by selling their souls to the devil, ayaan I'm sure u have taken the time to read the bible. Do tell me it's stance on woman comparing to men ... — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

We can't all leave this country, Bijan had told me-this is our home. The world is a large place, my magician had said when I went to him with my woes. You can write and teach wherever you are. You will be read more and heard better, in fact, once you are over there. To go or not to go? In the long run, it's all very personal, my magician reasoned. I always admired your former colleague's honesty, he said. Which former colleague? Dr. A, the one who said his only reason for leaving was because he liked to drink beer freely. I am getting sick of people who cloak their personal flaws and desires in the guise of patriotic fervor. They stay because they have no means of living anywhere else, because if they leave, they won't be the big shots they are over here; but they talk about sacrifice for the homeland. And then those who do leave claim they've gone in order to criticize and expose the regime. Why all these justifications? — Azar Nafisi

When civilians are not asked to pay any price, it's easy to be at war - not just to intervene in a foreign land in the first place, but to keep on fighting there. The justifications for staying at war don't have to be particularly rational or cogently argued when so few Americans are making the sacrifice that it takes to stay. — Rachel Maddow

His mind scolded him for his stupidity and urged him to forget her but his heart had no justifications for its stand. It remained unmoved, its solidarity unaffected, its arrogance still holding. — Faraaz Kazi

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since ...
I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies. — Wendell Berry

I got this month's delivery bill today - you're practically living off pastries!"

"The pastries are easier on my teeth," Grandpa called after him with a smile.

"That wouldn't be an issue if you would get new teeth!" John's voice carried in from the kitchen.

Grandpa pretended not to hear him. His memory might have gone to shit, but there were a few things about being old that he really enjoyed. — April Adams

Guilt is a huge player in the way blacks and whites relate to each other. It's huge and deadly when it is denied. It's huge and deadly when it is wallowed in. It's huge and deadly when it is exploited. There is no deliverance and no relief and no healing in any of those ways of dealing with guilt. Denial drives it below the surface where it creates endless illusions and self-justifications. Wallowing in it produces phony humility and obsequiousness and moral cowardice. Exploiting it gives a false sense of power that turns out to be only the weapon of weakness. If guilt is not dealt with more deeply, there will be no way forward. — John Piper

Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself. — Walt Whitman

Illusions ... are simple facts, but they have been created by the mind, by the spirit, and they are one of the justifications of the new spatial configuration. — Georges Braque

To be sure, if psychopaths do recognize that actions that are harmful are proscribed, this raises a question about why psychopaths and control criminals provide different explanations for why it is wrong to hit or pull someone's hair. Psychopaths offered conventional-type justifications (e.g., "it's not the done thing" [the subjects were British]), whereas the nonpsychopathic criminals offered justifications based on the victim's welfare. — Shaun Nichols

The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe
because no one else could be such a fool. — Thomas Sowell

Let those feelings out. Talk about it. Even if you're talking to your journal by yourself in an empty room. That still counts. That still matters.

If you know someone who's struggling and isolated, help them talk about it. Even if they don't have the right words. Even if you sit in silence as they try to feel safe. Even if they shower you with complaints, excuses, and justifications. Even if you can see they're just playing small, being irrational, blaming circumstances. Just be there. It all counts. It all matters. — Vironika Tugaleva

Almost everything that gets called "universal truth" or "common sense" is actually cultural. And too easily twisted into justifications for all kinds of behavior. — Greg Saunier

In this they resemble any reasonable being who does an unreasonable thing and justifies it with reasons. War, for example. My species has a great many good reasons for making war, though none of them is as good as the reason for not making war. Our most rational and scientific justifications-for instance, that we are an aggressive species-are perfectly circular: we make war because we make war. Our justifications for making a particular war (such as: our people must have more land and more wealth, or: our people must have more power, or: our people must obey out deity's orders to crush the sacrilegious infidel) all come down to the same thing: we must make war because we must. We have no choice. We have no freedom. This argument is not ultimately satisfactory to the reasoning mind, which desires freedom. — Ursula K. Le Guin

When we're trying to form and keep habits, we often search - even unconsciously - for loopholes. We look for justifications that will excuse us from keeping this particular habit in this particular situation. — Gretchen Rubin

But who knows why we really do anything? Who knows why we do what we do when we do it? Why your local barista greeted you with a curt 'hi' instead of her usual, mellifluous-sounding 'hello' has a trillion justifications. So, why someone decides to commit suicide might take a while to explain, and a lifetime to begin comprehending... — Samuel Armen

A person who is seeking to feel justification for some action might move from "What you've done angers me" to "What you've done is wrong." Popular justifications include the moral high ground of righteous indignation and the more simple equation known by its biblical name: an eye for an eye. — Gavin De Becker

The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to which we regard decisions as rational. If the justifications proceed properly, through recognized public institutions, and if they make sense to us, they are legitimate. — Michael Ignatieff

That's a load of crap!" Conor shouted. "He didn't need to kill her. The people were behind him. They would have followed him anyway." The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster. And so the injustice that I saw, the reason that I came walking, was for the queen, not the prince. — Patrick Ness

In inventing [General Juan Manuel de] Rosas' self-justification, I have taken the liberty of drawing almost exclusively on the words of Tony Blair, and the various self-justifications he produced to defend his foreign policy adventures with George Bush in the Middle East and the Central Asia. — Harry Thompson

The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The only justifications for belief have the form "justified for me". — Ken Wilber

Lincoln likely concluded - was, as Jackson had put it, "fallacious" in its justifications and, "in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the destruction of the Union." As Jackson had bluntly concluded: "Disunion by armed force is treason. — Harold Holzer

Like any pseudo scientific thinking, denialism begins with a desired conclusion. Rather than supporting a controversial or rejected claim, like many pseudo sciences, denialists maintain that a generally accepted scientific or historical claim is not true, usually for ideological reasons. Denialists then engage in what is called motivated reasoning, rationalizing why the undesired claim is not true or at least not proven. They therefore are working backwards from their desired conclusion, filling in justifications for what they believe, rather than following logic and evidence wherever it leads. — Steven Novella

Little white lies are part of everyday life. If you're in court being charged with a felony, you're probably going to be tempted to lie. Or if your girlfriend asks you if the sweater she is wearing makes her look fat; you're going to lie because you love that person. There are different reasons and justifications to lie; it's human nature. — Monica Raymund

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

We attribute to ourselves qualities that we do not possess because if we possessed them, our lives would exactly mirror our image of ourselves. Our lies about what is really happening in our lives are what we use to "patch up" our ego with rationalizations and justifications, all of which conceal from us the fact that we cannot really do anything because we have no Being. — Laura Knight-Jadczyk