Justify Quotes - Page 15

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

  Roy Baumeister

  Believe, Mean, People

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• It couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they're full grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going.

  Shalom Auslander

  Dog, Focus, Bird

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• So while he made you without you, he doesn't justify you without you.

  Saint Augustine

  Without You

  "Sermons (148-183).: On the New Testament. III,5". Book by Saint Augustine, 1992.

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• To the extent that we hyper-separate ourselves from nature and reduce it conceptually in order to justify domination, we not only lose the ability to empathise and to see the non-human sphere in ethical terms, but also get a false sense of our own character and location that includes an illusory sense of autonomy. The failure to see the non-human domain in the richer terms appropriate to ethics licences supposedly ‘purely instrumental’ relationships that distort our perceptions and enframings, impoverish our relations and make us insensitive to dependencies and interconnections

  Val Plumwood

  Relationship, Sympathy, Nature

  Val Plumwood (2005). “Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason”, p.9, Routledge

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• As men and women of character and of faith in the soundness of democratic methods, we must work like dogs to justify that faith.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Dog, Character, Men

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• I'm curious by individuals that embrace half a story so they can justify how incomplete they feel about their own self worth.

  Dane Cook

  Self Worth, Stories, Half

  Twitter post from Jun 9, 2013

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• Whenever women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants.

  Shirin Ebadi

  Rights, Law, Islam

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, progressive.org. September 1, 2004.

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• Here's the reality. The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god.

  Tim Wise

  Jesus, Reality, White

  "Erin Burnett Outfront". www.cnn.com. December 16, 2013.

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• The publisher, Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point, but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher.

  Robert Scheer

  Regret, Lying, Iraq

  "On Leaving the LA Times". www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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• The first thing to note is that pornography and many abductions occur apart from the use of computers, and that most child abuse happens within the family. So I think the extra degree of danger that computers pose doesn't justify the frenzy.

  Seymour Papert

  Children, Thinking, Abuse

  "Sunday Interview - Seymour Papert/ Computers in the Lives of Our Children/ an Mit Mathematician and Philosopher Is Exploring How Technology Can Educate the Next Generation - and Their Parents". www.sfgate.com. February 2, 1997.

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• I understand that the end does not justify the means. And this should be a lasting value for democracy.

  Park Geun-hye

  Mean, Democracy, Doe

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• The most insidious of sophisms are usually repeated to justify immodesty and seem to be the same everywhere.

  Pope Pius XII

  Modesty, Insidious, Seems

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• Every schoolchild knows that Columbus set out across the sea to prove that the world was round. But the belief in a spherical earth had a long and illustrious pedigree, as Columbus himself was well aware. . . . "The second reason that inspired the Admiral [Columbus] to launch his enterprise and helped justify his giving the name 'Indies' to the lands which he discovered was the authority of many learned men who said that one could sail westward from the western end of Africa and Spain to the eastern end of India, and that no great sea lay between."

  Ferdinand Columbus

  Men, Sea, Land

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• Dissent is the cousin of diversity; the respect for a wide range of beliefs. This begins by allowing people the space to say "no". If we cannot say "no" then our "yes" has no meaning. Each needs the chance to express their doubts and reservations, without having to justify them, or move quickly into problem solving. No is the beginning of the conversation for commitment.

  Peter Block

  Cousin, Moving, Commitment

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• I feel more comfortable in my own skin now than I ever have...I think there's something about loving Kai [her son] so much, in a way that I've never loved anyone, including myself. Also, I used to spend a lot of time alone, but he's this incredibly social kind of guy, so all of a sudden I'm always having people in and out of my house. It's changed the way I feel as a citizen of the world. And it's really important to me to feel good about what I'm working on, to justify the number of hours I'd have to be away from him.

  Jennifer Connelly

  Son, Motherhood, Thinking

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• IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.

  Huey Newton

  Believe, Cutting, White

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• When I write, I actually hear the characters speak. Almost like an actor - even though I'm not an actor at all - getting into their truth and to justify what they do.

  Kareem Mortimer

  Writing, Character, Speak

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• 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

  Echoes, Feelings, Perception

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• First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and second, the principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. What justifies the rights is not that they maximize the general welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they comprise a fair framework within which individuals and groups can choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

  Michael Sandel

  Good Life, Rights, Justice

  Michael J. Sandel (2005). “Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics”, p.151, Harvard University Press

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• Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

  Glen Duncan

  Coffee, Aroma, Existence

  Glen Duncan (2007). “I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story”, p.92, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

  George Santayana

  Life, Believe, Long

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.60, Indiana University Press

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• ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.

  Robert Parry

  Military, War, Mean

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• Far from being reluctantly propelled into hostilities by popular war fever, leaders incite that fever in order to gather support for their war policies. Thereby do they attempt to distract the public from pressing domestic matters, serve the overseas interests of U.S. investors, justify gargantuan military budgets, and present themselves as great leaders.

  Michael Parenti

  Military, War, Order

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• Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.

  Helen Keller

  Heart, Optimism, Facts

  Helen Keller (2012). “Optimism”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mean, Breathing Space, History

  Arthur Koestler (2015). “Darkness at Noon”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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