Justified Quotes - Page 17

• By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures.

  E. O. Wilson

  Race, Achievement, Humanity

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.72, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anger can serve a useful purpose if it is justified and directed appropriately. But when it's only a substitute for self-loathing and a justification for cruelty to others, the trigger in your brain can become horribly destructive and addicted to that emotion. It's like a tornado that blows away all of your pleasure and replaces it with emotional poison.

  G. Frank Lawlis

  Anger, Emotional, Blow

  4 Copy quote

• Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray; he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, History, Might

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.100, Wordsworth Editions

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.

  Edward Gibbon

  Pride, History, Age

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.137

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.

  Edith Wharton

  New York, Eye, Numbers

  Edith Wharton (2014). “Edith Wharton The Dover Reader”, p.222, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Children, Lying

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person's life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it the good we do can be breathtaking.

  Atul Gawande

  Sacrifice, Risk, Suffering

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.136, Metropolitan Books

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• The goal of a definition is to introduce a mathematical object. The goal of a theorem is to state some of its properties, or interrelations between various objects. The goal of a proof is to make such a statement convincing by presenting a reasoning subdivided into small steps each of which is justified as an "elementary" convincing argument.

  IU?. I. Manin

  Goal, Definitions, Steps

  8 Copy quote

• Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on His sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by His righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation. There must be atonement made for sin according to the righteousness of God. The person to make this atonement must be God and man.

  John Wycliffe

  Jesus, Men, Suffering

  209 Copy quote

• Moses became Americas true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty.

  Bruce Feiler

  Father, People, Risk

  4 Copy quote

• Faith is believing things by definition, which are not justified by reason. If it were justified by reason, it wouldn't be faith. It would just be ordinary belief. It's something you can't prove. That's what faith is, believing something you can't prove.

  Colin McGinn

  Believe, Ordinary, Definitions

  9 Copy quote

• Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror.

  Michel Onfray

  Needs, Philosopher, Conflict

  10 Copy quote

• There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

  Noam Chomsky

  Information, May, Assumption

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.39, Metropolitan Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I became a little alarmed at the number of my readers who took the meme more positively as a theory of human culture in its own right - either to criticize it (unfairly, given my original modest intention) or to carry it far beyond the limits of what I then thought justified. This was why I may have seemed to backtrack.

  Richard Dawkins

  Numbers, Atheism, Culture

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.127, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we don't get any treats, we feel depleted, resentful, and angry, and we feel justified in self-indulgence. We start to crave comfort - and grab that comfort wherever we can, even if it means breaking good habits.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Mean, Self, Comfort

  4 Copy quote

• We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress toward equality of the races.

  Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

  Sex, Believe, Mean

  9 Copy quote

• You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends ... But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.

  Umberto Eco

  Betrayal, Hate, Passion

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.355, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• For Christians to be linked in association with ministries who do not preach the gospel of Christ is to incur moral guilt. A Union which can continue irrespective of whether its member churches belong to a common faith is not fulfilling any scriptural function. The preservation of a denominational association when it is powerless to discipline heretics cannot be justified on the grounds of the preservation of 'Christian unity'... It is error which breaks the unity of churches, and to remain in a denominational alignment which condones error is to support schism.

  Charles Haddon

  Christian, Errors, Discipline

  8 Copy quote

• I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules. I think there is something about a good person doing bad things for what they consider to be a good reason. Then the battle is on to almost prove to the audience that it's justified. How far can you go with that? How far can that character go before people won't accept it? Trying to walk to edge of that line is a challenge.

  Steven Knight

  Character, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I feel embarrassed because I'll tell the kids if someone is driving really slow or cutting in, I'll say "Bloody Asian drivers." But I feel justified in saying it because I'm Asian.

  Pearl Tan

  Kids, Cutting, Asian

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God.

  Adolf Hitler

  Atheism, Weapons, Matter

  Adolf Hitler (1942). “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• A successful artist of any kind has to work so hard that she is justified in refusing to lay down her sceptre until she is placed on the bier.

  Edith Evans

  Successful, Artist, Kind

  "Dame Edith Evans, Ned's girl". Book by Bryan Forbes, Chapter 13, 1977.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made.

  John Howard

  Christian, War, Negative

  8 Copy quote

• Lincoln had faith in time, and time has justified his faith.

  Benjamin Harrison

  Presidential

  Benjamin Harrison (1901). “Views of an Ex-president”

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.

  Mary Garden

  Spiritual, Children, Views

  4 Copy quote