Justification Quotes - Page 17

• 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

  Strong, Character, Emotional

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• The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home.

  Norman Cousins

  Home, Practice, Decision

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• I love it when my justifications for avoiding housework are actually legitimate.

  Julie Kenner

  Avoiding, Housework

  Julie Kenner (2014). “The Trouble with Demons”, p.375, JKInk

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• What is proposed herein is that we have no right, nor any ethical justification, for clearing land or using wilderness while we tread over lawns, create erosion, and use land inefficiently. Our responsibility is to put our house in order. Should we do so, there will never be any need to destroy wilderness.

  Bill Mollison

  Responsibility, Order, Land

  "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual". Book by Bill Mollison, 1988.

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• There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Safety, Individual, Guise

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• People interpret things through their owns lens, just the way they do the Bible. You can find justification for just about everything in the Bible. I think man has got a great ego when it comes to his God, whatever that is. It just seems to me that someone who wants to take on God's punishment, it just seems a huge egoism to think that he should appoint himself to take care of God's punishments.

  Bill Paxton

  Bible, Men, Thinking

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• Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling. By this he meant that when this doctrine is understood, believed, and preached, as it was in New-Testament times, the church stands in the grace of God and is alive; but where it is neglected, overlaid, or denied, ... the church falls from grace and its life drains away, leaving it in a state of darkness and death.

  J. I. Packer

  Fall, Leaving, Darkness

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• The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations.

  Glenn Gould

  Art, Men, Burning

  Attributed to Glenn Gould in "Glenn Gould: Music and Mind" by Geoffrey Payzant, (p. 64), 1978.

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• Happiness not only needs no justification, but it is also the only final test of whether what I am doing is right for me. Only of course happiness is not the same as pleasure; it includes the pain of losing as well as the pleasure of finding.

  Marion Milner

  Happiness, Pain, Finals

  Marion Milner (2011). “A Life of One's Own”, p.157, Taylor & Francis

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• If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has a different justification: I see the motif, the way I painted it, is somehow ugly or unbearable. Then I try to follow my feelings and make it attractive. And that means a process of painting, changing or destroying - for however long it takes - until I think it has improved. And I don't demand an explanation from myself as to why this is so.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Thinking

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• I see in the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilization clashes and the use of religious justification for acts of terror, a clear and present danger to humanity.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Religious, Civilization, Humanity

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• If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.

  Albert Einstein

  Powerful, Healthy, Fundamentals

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• 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

  Self, Gains, Succeed

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• The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

  Bernard Berenson

  Art, Helping, Spectators

  Bernard Berenson (1958). “Essays in Appreciation”

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• 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

  Song, Sex, Passion

  Walt Whitman (2004). “Leaves of Grass”, p.87, Bantam Classics

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• If i had known... i would have lingered over my coffee a little longer.

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  Coffee, Farewell, Littles

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• One whispered yes becomes the wind song over an ocean of no's.

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  Song, Ocean, Wind

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• I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.

  Donald Miller

  Reading, Writing, Ideas

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• We must not think that faith itself is the soul's rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation.

  John Flavel

  Mean, Thinking, Soul

  John Flavel (1996). “The Method of Grace: How the Holy Spirit Works”, p.175, Hartland Publications

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• There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Concern, Interference

  Calvin Coolidge (2001). “The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses”, p.197, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• There's nothing people can't contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.

  Moliere

  People, Age, Praise

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• We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

  John Calvin

  Acceptance, Men, Righteous Man

  John Calvin (1975). “John Calvin: Selections from His Writings”, p.425, Oxford University Press

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• It is also true that the less possible it becomes for a man to acquire a new fortune, the more must the existing fortunes appear as privileges for which there is no justification. Policy is then certain to aim at taking these fortunes out of private hands, either by the slow process of heavy taxation of inheritance or by the quicker one of outright confiscation. A system based on private property and control of the means of production presupposes that such property and control can be acquired by any successful man.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Successful, Men

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• There is no justification for having an affair.

  Shanola Hampton

  Affair

  "Interview: Shanola Hampton on Things Never Said DVD". Interview with Wilson Morales, www.blackfilm.com. December 3, 2013.

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• Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Education, Teacher, Reading

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