Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Justify Quotes from famous authors such as Sterling Hayden, John Shelby Spong, Glenn Greenwald, Alexander Herzen, Valerie Plame. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
I felt reluctant accepting the very lucrative and easy life Hollywood had offered me. All of it planted a seed: If I could do something about the conditions of the world, I could probably justify my position as an actor.
2
The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.
3
The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the ‘battlefield’ is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited ‘battlefield.’
4
You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.
5
There’s no way you can possibly intellectually justify, ‘Well, it’s okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.’ That logic goes nowhere fast.
6
I think comedy can be a way of sugar-coating a pill that needs to be taken, and whatever I complain about onstage, I hope I justify the negativity by using humour to make the point.
7
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
8
I feel like I’m always having to justify why I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from the old days in Stoke-on-Trent, but I’m like that with anybody. I don’t let anybody in. I just rely on myself.
9
Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.
10
There will be people who don’t like you or aren’t convinced. I’d rather let my work talk than justify in words.
11
It doesn’t mean you can’t discuss important things, but I would never do a joke about cancer, just because I don’t think any joke is funny enough to justify upsetting someone who is going through that.
12
It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn’t think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it’s very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
13
Social media is a really cool way to tell your story to people who are interested in hearing it. It’s not getting put through the filter of a television executive who’s decided you’re too old to justify the expenditure.
14
During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.
15
If you take Darwin’s theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify a number of very horrendous things.
16
Even a cursory run through American history shows exceptionalism has been used to justify bloodshed, oppression, and profit.
17
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
18
Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn’t have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.
19
Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless – until they aren’t.
20
The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life – involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense.
21
What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro’s borders?
22
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
23
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
24
I’m not supporting nor not supporting TV casting shows – there is no doubt they are created for financial reasons – but I don’t have a problem with wanting to sell tickets, and if you want to do an arena version of a rock musical, you have to sell a lot of tickets to justify the cast.
25
My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and U.S. support for these policies.
26
I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.
27
I don’t have to justify myself. I work a lot and I earn a lot.
28
I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.
29
I had given up magic, because it had reached a state of perfection. I felt that I was able to transform men into animals. I did not make use of this capability, because I believed I could not justify an intervention of this kind in the life of another person.
30
It will never do to plead sin as an excuse for sin, or to attempt to justify sinful acts by pleading that we have an evil heart. This instead of being a valid apology, is the very ground of our condemnation.
31
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
32
I think there’s a preoccupation with the American market to make excuses and justify its past. If it isn’t current, it means somebody has to make an excuse for it. If it’s ‘cult,’ it gives it a sense of illegitimate legitimacy.
33
People will justify whatever for a good cause.
34
I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily, when we engage militarily, and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?
35
I daresay one good concert justifies a week of satisfaction at home.
36
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
37
Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it.
38
The experience of life that you and I have is pretty much a jigsaw puzzle in the box: Day-to-day experiences of disconnected pieces that don’t seem to justify the efforts we make each day.
39
Though it’s harder to justify the use of a cadaver for practicing nose jobs than it is for practicing coronary bypasses, it is justifiable nonetheless. Cosmetic surgery exists, for better or for worse, and it’s important, for the sake of those who undergo it, that the surgeons who do it are able to do it well.
40
It has been hard to get my head around how Justice Antonin Scalia rationalizes his decisions. His body blow to the Voting Rights Act was a head scratcher, but at least he was calm when he attempted to justify his odd logic.
41
Logically, it may be argued that banks could indeed lower interest rates and make up their profits through larger borrowing volumes. But banks, in turn, could justify exorbitant rates by arguing that they cater to a riskier segment.
42
There’s a guy I used to pay to work with me who’d call me ‘kiddo.’ I said, ‘There’s nothing that justifies you expressing that to me, your boss.’
43
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.
44
Everybody wants to make an opinion and that’s fine, but especially for young people to get involved in something they might not understand as much, I think they need to let people, whatever they do for a living, justify it.
45
When we go to war, our politicians will be guided by our popular will. And if we believe that torture ‘got’ bin Laden, then we will be more prone to accept the view that a good ‘end’ can justify brutal ‘means.’
46
For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.
47
The very best testament to the validity of the Warren Commission’s findings is that after an unrelenting, close to forty-five-year effort, the Commission’s fiercest critics have not been able to produce any new credible evidence that would in any way justify a different conclusion.
48
Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.
49
If we come to the conclusion after 90 days that the synergies are big enough to justify the efforts, then we can go to the second step, which consists of saying: what would be the best organization and conditions – including shareholdings – in order to make sure the synergies happen.
50
I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.
51
I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.
52
Any faith of more than 1.6 billion people is going to have some of them who falsely justify actions on that faith.
53
I try to turn a place on film into a mental state. I always have three or four locations that I repeat and return to in a film, to make it more mythic. But my fiction films are relatively subjective stories, experienced though one character. And that always justifies a little stylisation in terms of landscape.
54
The graduate earnings premium, used by the Tories to justify many of their regressive higher education policies, is fast becoming a myth.
55
Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal.
56
I couldn’t really justify playing for money, and I think what I wanted to achieve put me at too great a risk, so I just decided on another profession.
57
The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration.
58
Poetry is not the language we live in. It’s not the language of our day-to-day errand-running and obligation-fulfilling, not the language with which we are asked to justify ourselves to the outside world. It certainly isn’t the language to which commercial value has been assigned.
59
What amazes me is how far some people will go to justify their behavior to themselves, just to preserve that self-perception.
60
The old racism of imperialism not only rendered the postwar political elite unable to see black people as full British citizens, it provided them with a whole glossary of stereotypes and preconceptions that they then deployed in order to justify their aim of introducing immigration controls.
61
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
62
If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?
63
The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.
64
In my humble opinion, propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans throughout history to justify wars, justify atrocities, justify evil. ISIS has taken it to a new extreme.
65
My work has always been the thing that justifies my life.
66
Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment.
67
We cannot allow anything that’s called ‘national defense’ to justify any and all spending. We need to be very, very careful that we don’t overspend and say, ‘Oh, that’s defense,’ when perhaps it isn’t.
68
I really like not having to justify my decisions to anyone else, as well as the freedom to vacation whenever I want.
69
It’s nice to be able to, you know, for me to be able to personally do whatever the heck I feel like, whether I think that I can justify it exactly in business concerns or not.
70
When no one’s buying your records, it’s easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can’t really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.
71
When you’re a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you’re smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.
72
Michael Bradley has the stuff of leadership; he works hard and can break up the opponent’s play. However, that’s not enough to justify his philanthropic attitude towards possession, the generous portion of balls that he contributes to his foes. His sloppiness constantly culminates in unnecessary goals.
73
The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
74
Justify, you can walk up to him and he might give you three, four, five seconds and then he’s done with you. He’ll try to bite your head off. It’s not in a mean way. He’s just a big, tough horse. He’ll run you out of the stall.
75
When a director from Hindi cinema is looking for an actor from another language, it will be only because he feels the character justifies this and that can only be for a well-written character.
76
I know why the UFC runs the business the way they do. I know why Conor McGregor makes a base pay of $3 million. But I think I justify my pay with my skill set, and I’ve always been willing to promote my brand.
77
I stand by the stuff I say, even the really stupid stuff. I’ll find a way to justify it.
78
My work has always been the thing that justifies my life.
79
Anderson’s muckraking is one of debatable ends constantly used to justify questionable works.
80
The Israelis have suffered a great deal, we must condemn suicide bombers, and we must never say that the plight of the Palestinians justifies this terrible thing.
81
Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.
82
The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
83
We need to learn… how war brutalises and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonise our enemies in order to justify that war’s indefinite continuance.
84
Vladimir Putin has to create foreign enemies, and he also has to justify… he has to claim… he can’t acknowledge that there’s a legitimate protest against his authoritarian rule, so he’s got to blame it on Hilary Clinton.
85
Players talk about pot odds all the time, especially when they try to justify a call that they made. Whenever I hear this line of reasoning, though, I can’t help but wonder if they properly thought through the consequences of their call.
86
When you loot or behave violently, you give grounds to those that try to justify illegal police abuse. You become the poster child for them to say, ‘See, we have no choice but to shoot and kill, or use a chokehold, because just look at the way they behave.’
87
If you are at the top in entertainment, you earn money that you can never justify to ordinary people doing proper jobs. You can’t.
88
If the end does not justify the means – what can?
89
I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.
90
I think calling what Paul Ryan is doing a ‘budget’ is lending some validity to it. It is not a budget. If it were a budget, he could justify his revenue projections, he could justify his cuts, and he can’t. This is a scheme to rob the poor and give to the rich.
91
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.
92
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
93
Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.
94
Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless – until they aren’t.
95
You can’t come in and value your company at $10 billion if you don’t have any sales, or you don’t have anything to justify why your company is worth that much.
96
The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
97
One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, everything-will-turn-out-okay-in-the-end philosophy of economics in order to justify their own evil works. And the economists, for the most part, have sucked up to that money.
98
I think that human nature is scared of change and justifies it in all sort of ways.
99
Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.
100
People have this misconception that people with six-pack abs can deliver hits, but that’s not the case. Had I built six-pack abs for ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns,’ I wouldn’t have been able to justify myself.
101
The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism – the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success – actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.
102
If it’s not coming from your heart and if you don’t believe it, then more than likely you’re not going to be able to bring yourself to performances that justify playing.
103
Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.
104
The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
105
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.
106
A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.
107
Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism.
108
Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.
109
You speak to the press at the Tour every day, but most often in a negative sense. Ninety per cent of the questions you are asked in the post-race press conferences are challenging or provocative, so you have to justify yourself; you have to try to give the right answers about every topic across the board.
110
I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn’t refer to anything that’s real. If it’s consistent, if it’s entertaining, if it’s interesting, it justifies its being there.
111
I woke up one day and thought: ‘I want to write a book about the history of my body.’ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.
112
In ‘Bush v. Gore,’ five justices had a partisan outcome in mind and then made up the judicial principle to justify it, while claiming that the decision would not be precedent for any future cases.
113
The sense of crisis is everything for Trump – even if it’s largely invented. His depiction of darkness justifies his candidacy, the need to violently shake the system. His ability to conjure fear is what distinguished him from all those career pols he has vanquished. And it suits his ego.
114
Simply put, Guantanamo is one of the best propaganda tools that terrorists have today. Our enemies use it to justify terrorism and recruit others to carry out violent jihad, and our allies continue to criticize it as a violation of the rule of law.
115
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
116
What does it say about a president’s policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record? What does it say about the fiction of old liberalism to insist that good jobs and good schools and good wages will result from policies that have failed us, time and again?
117
Business should never be allowed to justify mean, thug ugly deals for any reason.
118
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.
119
Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse of children. When contempt for sex underlies teachings, this creates a breeding ground for abuse.
120
Offending someone’s religious sensibilities can never justify a violent response. There are no ‘but’ qualifiers, and the sooner that this lesson is internalized, the rosier our future will be.
121
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
122
I go to my office nearly every day, and I’ll sit there for six or seven hours and come up with ideas, and that’s the only way I can justify turning up on stage.
123
Advertising, the product of capitalism, can only justify itself on the premise that the market is a force for good.
124
I totally reject and have rejected throughout my entire career the proposition that the end justifies the means or that a judge should decide cases based on a desire to reach a certain outcome.
125
Racists are irrational and illogical in their attempts to justify their prejudices.
126
When you have a limited resource and you have a lot of people wanting that resource, then those who get more justify as to why they got more, and those who get less say they have been treated badly.
127
You don’t need to ever justify the way you feel.
128
The ends must justify the means.
129
Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.
130
I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
131
I jump at every opportunity I get to do something new but only if I feel that I can justify it.
132
If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?
133
I’ve dealt with this forever: the younger woman that married the wealthier, older man. I mean, I’m tired of having to justify my 20-year marriage.
134
I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.
135
Congress often covers the exposed crotch of our human spaceflight program with the figleaf of science when it’s an obvious lie to justify the pumping of billions of dollars into the belly of an ever-voracious aerospace industrial complex. And yes, of course space is dangerous.
136
When I see people with an interesting gap year, if they can explain it, if they can justify it, if they can show what they’ve learnt from it, it’s sometimes more profitable or more intelligent than having been through a traditional, continuous race from high school to the end of university.
137
If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.
138
I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man: who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.
139
The construction of a courthouse is a long-term investment in a building where important public business is done. But that does not justify extravagant expenditures. Courthouses should be dignified, durable, and functional. They should not be grandiose, monumental, and luxurious.
140
I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn’t picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn’t a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you.
141
One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
142
I spend an extraordinary amount of time in my car, so I can justify the expense. That’s the only extravagance in my life – it’s my car.
143
Multi-millionaires who pay half or less than half of the percentage of tax the rest of us pay justify their actions by saying they pay what the law requires. Though true, the fact is they found ways within the law to beat the purpose of the law – which, in the case of taxes, is that we all pay our fair share.
144
So is man’s heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.
145
The desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
146
The thing I will say is that probably culturally, women are treated differently, which means, I think, you’re criticized more, you have to listen a little bit more, you have to justify yourself.
147
Speech is not violence. The Left conflates the two in order to justify its own violent reactions to differing points of view.
148
I’m 20 years old. I like to party as much as anyone my age. Going clubbing is my way of relaxing or releasing a lot of stress. I don’t feel that I should have to justify that part of my life. I don’t know that I’m necessarily an addict.
149
For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It’s not negotiable.
150
I think that human nature is scared of change and justifies it in all sort of ways.
151
A lot of people like to justify women’s supporting role in sports media by saying, ‘Well, they’ve never played the game, so they just aren’t qualified to speak about it.’
152
The great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude or forced labor. I really believe that the true evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference that we created to justify it.
153
You need a director, a script, and a role to justify a risk.
154
You don’t need to ever justify the way you feel.
155
To leave in search of yourself, of your real needs, is easier when you don’t have to justify yourself to anyone, when there are not too many people bestowing you their attention.
156
How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We’re supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties.
157
I’m not such a nuisance to the world, and the kick I get out of living can, I suppose, justify the impositions I make on it. But when life isn’t so fun, well, then I start to wonder. What’s the point of going on if it’s just trouble for us both? My friends will miss me, I am told.
158
When a moment in front of me appears to be particularly special, whether it be by beauty or experience, I capture it. I usually find a reason to justify taking that photo – symmetry, or color, or contrast – and it’s my hope that my photography sheds light onto what I see and do on a daily basis.
159
My wife knows that I love her too much, so she is fine with the intimate scenes I do. She also knows that only if my role justifies such a scene will I do it. She understands my work as an actor.
160
The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don’t be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.
161
I have to justify my job every day.
162
Men and women wonder if merely walking or driving justifies being followed, stopped, or questioned. This practice and the presumption of guilt so often associated with people of color must come to an end.
163
After I finished ‘The Darkest Minds’ series, I knew I wanted to take a risk and work on something completely different – lighter in tone, with a little bit more romance, and a completely different set of characters – that would also, um, finally justify my liberal arts degree.
164
How could you justify giving Holland twice the amount of money that you gave Belgium? Well, finally, I put it up to them. They said that they couldn’t do it; it would destroy them. I said they had to do it. And I finally got support from Hoffman on it.
165
Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.
166
I can pretty much justify anything as work if I’m reading the news or whatever.
167
Apartheid – both petty and grand – is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.
168
As an actor, I should justify the role given to me. So, as a villain, my job was to make people hate me.
169
What a crazy coincidence that the teaching of Christ sees to be so compatible with late-era capitalism, suburban isolation, rampant consumerism. And so I am not ever surprised when I see evangelicals contort themselves to justify supporting Donald Trump.
170
It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
171
I know that I can cook well on a low budget so I can’t really justify spending a fortune on food.
172
Democrats justify anything they do against Trump as being righteous, even if it’s morally wrong or even if it’s illegal, because they’re so driven to stop Trump.
173
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.
174
Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions.
175
When a novel is based on an actual crime, it should do much more than loosely fictionalize it. The novel must stand alone as a work of art that justifies using the story for its own purposes.
176
Until the province is willing to look internally at their inflated budget, to engage the private sector, to exhaust every other available avenue, we can’t justify a series of costly new taxes on residents who are already telling us that they just can’t afford it.
177
Let women write horror. Let women write darkness, let women write trauma, without having to carve out their own trauma to justify it.
178
You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, ‘Things happen for a reason’, there’s a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way.
179
The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
180
I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates, not simply in explanation of what is there but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire.
181
You can easily justify to anyone about the need to keep supporting Israel. We get very generous support. We need it.
182
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.
183
I really feel like there have been moments of some level of creative nonfiction. I have kind of had to explain or justify some of the timeline and logistics of my life in a way that made sense to others.
184
There are still people, obviously, who are stopping you and want a selfie because they need to justify their own lives by being in close proximity to a celebrity… but those are minor with me. I’m not a major celebrity.
185
I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law.
186
I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, ‘You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.’
187
In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture. The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.
188
I don’t have to justify myself every time I go to Israel.
189
I don’t like memoirs. I think they’re self-serving, and people use them to settle scores, and I really tried not to do that. You have to have a really interesting life to justify memoir, and my life has been pretty ho-hum.
190
Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.
191
Where are the gains for religious freedom and human rights to justify all the bombings, invasions and wars we have conducted in the lands from Libya to Pakistan – to justify the losses we have endured and the death and suffering we have inflicted?
192
A Code of Honor: Never approach a friend’s girlfriend or wife with mischief as your goal. There are just too many women in the world to justify that sort of dishonorable behavior. Unless she’s really attractive.
193
No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.
194
It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.
195
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
196
Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.
197
Even if certain rogue countries do things we wish nobody did, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their foolishness should justify our following suit.
198
It was the understanding of the power of perception that allowed the Martin Luther King, Jr. generations to stay true to the strategy of non-violence, refusing to retaliate when every emotional instinct would justify them doing so.
199
Doesn’t the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes.
200
I’m not an apologist for Iran’s actions. Iran certainly has supported activities of terrorism, and the Houthis don’t have clean hands. The Houthis have engaged in crimes too. But the idea that that justifies American involvement in a civil war in Yemen doesn’t make any sense strategically.
201
There’s always been some moron-who usually went by the name of ‘producer’ – who would have to justify his existence, and interfere.
202
While the West tries to turn its civilization into cultural variety hour, Islam tries to turn Muslim lands into a cultural monolith. The same West that justifies the rap culture thinks that every Muslim terrorist bombing is an expression of economic angst or social alienation.
203
Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity – whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics, or white wealth – to justify the brutal assaults against black people of all genders.
204
The facts of the fossil record never justified denying poor people a healthy diet. The facts of the weather record do not justify denying poor people affordable energy. And no set of facts, whatever they may be, can justify denying scientists – or anyone else, for that matter – the right to free speech.
205
Why climb? That’s a question that baffles me. It perplexes me. I really asked that a lot on Everest. I can’t justify it. I can’t say it’s for a good cause. All I can say is look at the history of exploration: it’s full of vainglorious pursuits.
206
You know, we’re each the hero of our own story and we perceive what’s going on around us, and especially in a relationship, from the kind of viewpoint of, ‘Well, this is my story, and I’m the hero of that, and I justify what I do around it.’
207
I think it’s really difficult to justify converting a film that wasn’t shot in 3-D into 3-D. I really do believe, as does James Cameron and all the people who are actually pro-3-D, that you have to go out and shoot it that way. You have nothing but compromise if you don’t.
208
It is a struggle for the minds of the people… No cause justifies recourse to terrorism.
209
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
210
For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It’s not negotiable.
211
You shouldn’t have to justify your work.
212
As an entrepreneur, the latitude of failure and of success is directly correlated to people. I am growing more and more attentive to my first instincts, even if I can’t justify them, as they apply to people.
213
The reason I’m uncomfortable with celebrity and don’t care about it is that none of that matters. I think that’s why people attack me and think I’m arrogant. I’ve never felt the need to justify myself. If I make good music, that music will do the job for me, even when I’m dead and gone.
214
If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
215
To leave in search of yourself, of your real needs, is easier when you don’t have to justify yourself to anyone, when there are not too many people bestowing you their attention.
216
One of the bad things about bad behavior by politicians (particularly by Donald Trump, because he’s president, but by others as well) is that it not only can encourage bad behavior by politicians of all ideological stripes but also can be cited to justify it.
217
It’s nice just to be able to go out and, basically, be able to play other types of music and not have any pressure to almost explain it and justify why you did. I just do it because I like to have some fun.
218
I think comedy directors tend to feel a need to justify the bad behavior, and I just never think that. I like bad behavior, I’ve always liked bad behavior, I’m a fan of bad behavior, and I don’t think you have to justify bad behavior.
219
As an actor, the ambition is to play interesting characters. And in the indie genre world, the budgets are low. That allows me, as an actor, not to have a financial value behind my name, to justify me being in these bigger parts for these types of movies.
220
Gentlemen, I fervently trust that before long the principle of arbitration may win such confidence as to justify its extension to a wider field of international differences.
221
Our knowledge of animals and their behaviour has come a long way. We can no longer justify imprisoning them, robbing them of everything that is natural and important to them and turning them into objects of ridicule for our amusement.
222
I understand that the end does not justify the means. And this should be a lasting value for democracy.
223
Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.
224
A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.
225
I really hate to be put in the position of trying to justify something, a decision that was made. I’m a military guy: when a decision is made, I go along with it, whatever the manufactured controversy and criticism.
226
You have to have your own internal barometer of what is too far. I try and consider feelings of people in the audience. What you have to try and do is that when there is something that could be seen as a transgression, you actually have a reason to justify the joke.
227
Apartheid – both petty and grand – is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.
228
Nothing can justify war.
229
I still remember my quote from the 2007 World Cup, when I said scoring two threes was as good as hitting a six. That was me trying to justify what you couldn’t. To me, and this was before I became director of cricket, we just couldn’t do that again.
230
One thing I’ve learned in my limited experience is you can justify anything intellectually. There are a million reasons to stay with someone, and a million reasons to end something – so you can really only trust your gut.
