Justify Quotes - Page 26

• Many have been deceived by outward appearances and have proceeded to write and teach about good works and how they justify without even mentioning faith.... Wearying themselves with many works, they never come to righteousness.

  Martin Luther

  Writing, Appearance, Good Work

  Martin Luther (2012). “Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings”, p.867, Fortress Press

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• If it's anything that's going to result in suffering to animals or people, then I don't think [the end] justifies the means... Yeah; but then again if you could hurt ten people to save 100 people and there was no option, what would you do? I can't really address that.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Hurt, Mean, Thinking

  "In the Hot Seat, Part II: Activism and Controversy". Interview with Catherine Clyne, www.satyamag.com. January 2001.

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• The preceding criticism justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.

  Georges Bataille

  Laughter, Sacrifice, Dancing

  "On Nietzsche". Book by Georges Bataille, p. xxxii, 1945.

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• There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Mean, Long, Community

  Richard M. Nixon's speech on the October Crisis (October 1970) as quoted in Louis Fournier "F.L.Q: The Anatomy of an Underground movement" (p. 256), 1984.

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• I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof.

  Aleister Crowley

  Book, Soul, Way

  Aleister Crowley (1991). “Magick: In Theory and Practice”, Book Sales

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• Christ's divinity accounts for His exaltation to the right hand of God, justifies the worship of angels and the confidence of mankind. It makes clear His right to the throne of the universe, and enables the mind to understand why He is exalted in providence, in grace, and in judgment. It is the unifying truth that harmonizes all other teachings of Christianity, and renders the entire system symmetrical and complete.

  George C. Lorimer

  Teaching, Angel, Hands

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (p. 57), 1895.

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• no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

  Karl Popper

  Swans, White, Doe

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.4, Routledge

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• I can't justify to myself working less, even if you get more out of it. Even though, in practice, it does seem it would be better for me personally.

  Chael Sonnen

  Practice, Doe, Would Be

  Source: bleacherreport.com

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• We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole. But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X.

  Paul Klee

  Art, Succeed, Foundation

  Statement of 1917. "Teaching at the Bauhaus". Book by Rainer Wick and Gabriele Diana Grawe, p. 231, 2000.

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• The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.

  E. O. Wilson

  Light, Views, Toxic

  "Can Biology Do Better Than Faith?". www.newscientist.com. November 02, 2005.

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• If society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble.

  Joseph Cook

  Evil, May, Affection

  Joseph Cook (1879). “Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events”

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• I am too sick to work and haven't money enough to last 2 months and pay income tax. I want to keep going but do not see quite how, and there is no alternative - rather than justify my mother's 25-year dread of my "coming back on her, sick," I must kill myself. If she has to pay funeral costs, at least she will cut them to the bone and I will not be here to endure her martyrdom and prolong it by living.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Mother, Cutting, Years

  Rose Wilder Lane's diary entry, December 9, 1933.

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• In Britain, journalists often view comparisons with our society going back two, three, or seven centuries as more relevant than comparisons going back two, three, or seven decades. Drunkenness centuries ago is more illuminating than comparative sobriety 30 years ago. The distant past, selectively mined for evidence that justifies our current conduct, becomes more important than living memory.

  Anthony Daniels

  Memories, Past, Views

  "Selective Memory". www.city-journal.org. July 6, 2004.

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• When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.

  Benjamin Netanyahu

  War, Impact, Civilization

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• My real purpose in telling middle-school students stories was to practice telling stories. And I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. And the way I would justify it to the head teacher if he came in or to any parents who complained was, look, I'm telling these great stories because they're part of our cultural heritage. I did believe that.

  Philip Pullman

  Teacher, Real, Believe

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.

  Jared Diamond

  Government, Religion, Latter

  Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.233, W. W. Norton & Company

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• By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.

  Carl Sagan

  Fate, Thinking, Other Worlds

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?", 1990.

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• The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Long Ago, People, Secret

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• People use ideas of non-duality as an escape from reality. It is very easy to say there is no winning and losing and justify the fact that you didn't do a very good job.

  Frederick Lenz

  Success, Jobs, Buddhism

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• To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Christian, Atheism, Foundation

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Idea of a Christian Society”, p.67, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true.

  Antony Flew

  Thinking, Self, Atheism

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• I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.

  Neil Sheehan

  Pain, Thinking, People

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• It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Men, Atheism

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Lectures and Essays”, p.247, tredition

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• It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and spiritual refreshment that religion has brought to a few has been too great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious belief.

  Peter Medawar

  Spiritual, Religious, Blood

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.210, Oxford University Press, USA

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• We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.

  Frans de Waal

  Strong, People, Poor

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