Expediency Quotes - Page 4

• Expediency may tip the scales when arguments are nicely balanced.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  May, Argument, Scales

  Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, Abraham Lawrence Sainer (1999). “Law is Justice: Notable Opinions of Mr. Justice Cardozo”, p.424, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate. Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle.

  George W Truett

  Differences, Atheism, Liberty

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• Don't become cynical. Don't give up hope. Don't believe that everything is judged only by expediency. There is idealism in this world. There is human brotherhood.

  Golda Meir

  Giving Up, Believe, Don't Give Up

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• God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.

  Wendell Phillips

  Giving, Justice, Guarantees

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• I had to learn that there is more to the human being than material comfort, more than success, more even than national spirit or patriotism. That in any being worthy of being human there is also a demand for justice, for liberty, and that justice needs the evidence of all our lives, liberty is one and indivisible and collective, and no one can talk of justice solely for expediency's sake, nor of liberty while human beings, anywhere else on earth, are still in bondage.

  Han Suyin

  Freedom, Justice, Liberty

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• I lay very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty; but, after all, he must determine his course of action, for himself.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Stress, Men, Giving

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• [Law] is one part justice to nine parts expediency. Who needs it.

  Lucille Kallen

  Law, Justice, Nine

  Lucille Kallen (1981). “Introducing C.B. Greenfield”

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• An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety.

  Gary Hamel

  Uplifting, Accomplishment, Purpose

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• Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

  Adrienne Rich

  Reality, Mad, Mind

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• Justice, not expedience, must be the guiding light. The orator must fix his eye on the polestar of justice, and plough straight thither. The moment he glances toward expediency, he falls from his high estate.

  John Peter Altgeld

  Fall, Eye, Light

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• When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue; not by wire pulling and demagoguery; not by the arts of popularity; not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency; but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country; by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

  Elihu Root

  Country, Teacher, Courage

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• Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are responsible for the growth of ISIS because they precipitously withdrew from Iraq in 2011 against the advice of every single general and for political expediency.

  Carly Fiorina

  Isis, Iraq, Political

  FaceBook post by Carly Fiorina from Dec 30, 2015

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• I am pro-Israeli, not because of political expediency, but because I believe Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

  Jimmy Carter

  Believe, Biblical, Israel

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• America is governed by rules of law, and those are not ones that the President of the United States or anybody else can just set aside for the sake of expediency Even when we are deeply supportive of Turkish democracy, and even when we care deeply about any attempts to overthrow their government or any other illegal actions, we've got to go through a legal process.

  Barack Obama

  Government, Law, America

  Barack Obama's Remarks with President Pena Nieto of Mexico in Joint Press Conference, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. July 22, 2016.

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• As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even one step ahead, who do not want to think and do not intend to honour their commitments.

  Vladimir Putin

  Commitment, Thinking, Political

  Source: www.rt.com

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• I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Light, Order

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

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• It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Justice, Mind, Ordinary

  Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, Abraham Lawrence Sainer (1999). “Law is Justice: Notable Opinions of Mr. Justice Cardozo”, p.424, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.

  Richard Whately

  Sacrifice, Being True

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• Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal of its approval upon Regularity of conformation.

  Edwin A. Abbott

  Approval, Regularity, Seals

  Edwin A. Abbott (2015). “Flatland”, p.29, Xist Publishing

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• Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lying, Moving, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.210, Graphic Arts Books

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• Purest religion is highest expediency. Many things are lawful but they are not all expedient.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religion, Highest

  Mahatma Gandhi (1981). “Young India”

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• Judgment without character is expediency... or worse.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Character, Judgment

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

  Neal Shusterman

  Compassion, Forget, Easy

  Neal Shusterman (2012). “Unwind Unboxed: Unwind; UnStrung: an Unwind story; UnWholly”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• Where it is in his own interest, every organism may reasonably be expected to aid his fellows. Where he has no alternative, he submits to the yoke of communal servitude. Yet given a full chance to act in his own interest, nothing but expediency will restrain him from brutalizing, from maiming, from murdering his brother, his mate, his parent, or his child. Scratch an 'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite' bleed.

  Michael Ghiselin

  Brother, Children, Hypocrite

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• The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions, decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.

  Eric Johnston

  Philosophy, Believe, Men

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