Justify Quotes - Page 33

• Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

  Alan Perlis

  Mean, Goal, Technique

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• If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?

  Robert Moses

  Mean, Doe, Ends

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• Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.

  Emma Goldman

  Exercise, Men, Shoes

  Emma Goldman (2012). “Living My Life”, p.428, Courier Corporation

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• The darkness that we see in our world today is due to the disintegration of things out of harmony with God's laws. The basic conflict is not between nations, it is between two opposing beliefs. The first is that evil can be overcome by more evil, that the end justifies the means. This belief is very prevalent in our world today. It is the war way. It is the official position of every major nation.

  Peace Pilgrim

  War, Mean, Two

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• I am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

  Jason Mraz

  Acceptance, Mirrors, Who I Am

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• If the end is right, it justifies the beans!

  Stephen Sondheim

  Ends, Beans, Ifs

  Stephen Sondheim, Hudson Talbott, James Lapine (2002). “Into the Woods”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• The confusion, the difficulties, the contradictions which, in consequence of a want of accurate distinctions in this particular, have up to even a recent period encumbered mathematics in all those branches involving the consideration of negative and impossible quantities, will at once occur to the reader who is at all versed in this science, and would alone suffice to justify dwelling somewhat on the point, in connexion with any subject so peculiarly fitted to give forcible illustration of it as the Analytical Engine.

  Ada Lovelace

  Dwelling, Illustration, Giving

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• People may like what third-party candidates say, because often they are the only ones saying anything, but they usually won't vote for someone who doesn't have a chance. Since third-party candidates are not in the news, they are considered to be not really in the race; and since they are not in the race, this justifies treating them as if they are not news.

  Michael Parenti

  Party, Race, People

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• Reading for experience is the only reading that justifies excitement. Reading for facts is necessary bu the less said about it in public the better. Reading for distraction is like taking medicine. We do it, but it is nothing to be proud of. But reading for experience is transforming.

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Reading, Medicine, Proud

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• I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions and ignorance of the value of public discussions. I have no doubt that all their other measures will be good and wise. It is really an assembly of demigods.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wise, Sorry, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.228

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• People don't need to find reasons to justify their not giving. What they need to find is the inspiration to give. And those who don't, but could afford to, are missing out on one of wealth's greatest luxuries.

  Andrew Tobias

  Inspiration, Luxury, People

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• To 'justify' means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him (her) who was accused as if his own innocence were confirmed.

  John Calvin

  Mean, Guilt, Innocence

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• Many Americans who are not fastened at the temples to a Christian prayer book are offended by politicians who justify their decisions by piously quoting the Old Testament.

  Susie Bright

  Christian, Prayer, Book

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• Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created and appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia. On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems.

  Michael Ruppert

  Stars, War, Fighting

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• There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mirrors, People, Monsters

  "Question time" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2003.

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• I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Thinking, Intellectual, Important

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• We are able to persevere only because God works within us, within our free wills. And because God is at work in us, we are certain to persevere. The decrees of God concerning election are immutable. They do not change, because He does not change. All whom He justifies He glorifies. None of the elect has ever been lost.

  R. C. Sproul

  Giving Up, Doe, Able

  R.C. Sproul (2017). “The R.C. Sproul Collection Volume 1: The Holiness of God / Chosen by God”, p.364, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Views, Numbers, Liberty

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1861

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• First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Thinking, Government, Law

  Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 2002.

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• I do not exclude this, but I would like to draw your attention to one absolutely key aspect: In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council can sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state is inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.

  Vladimir Putin

  Independent, Gay, Keys

  "G20: Russia says it will consider Syria military action but needs more proof". "AM", www.abc.net.au. September 5, 2013.

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• Is this money well spent? This is taxpayer money, it is going to be adding to the deficit short term and if we can't justify it, then we're not going to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, just to make somebody happy, if it's not good for the economy.

  Barack Obama

  Money, Dollars, Economy

  Interview with John Harwood, www.nbcnews.com. January 7, 2012.

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• Everybody has a capacity for a happy life. All these talks about how difficult times we live in, that's just a clever way to justify fear and laziness.

  Lev Landau

  Clever, Happy Life, Laziness

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• We are all warriors. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in.

  Steven Pressfield

  Integrity, Believe, Struggle

  Steven Pressfield (2011). “The Warrior Ethos”, p.12, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• This is how they justify not wanting to strive for self-improvement. It's how they explain their continued inaction. It's just an excuse. There are plenty of video clips on the Internet showing what I really look like. Some people even spread rumors about me and retouch my pictures to hurt me. But I don't take them seriously. I'm even flattered! It's what success is like. I'm happy I seem unreal to them, it means I'm doing a good job.

  Valeria Lukyanova

  Hurt, Jobs, Mean

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• Although such research [into the paranormal] has yet to produce anything in the way of a repeatable controlled experiment, its practitioners argue that its revolutionary potentialities justify its continuation. My own feeling is that after a century of total failure it has become a bloody bore.

  Dennis Flanagan

  Failure, Science, Feelings

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