Justifications Quotes

“You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“One thing we should not forget: if we don’t guard against those trying to sell justifications for letting the gory constructions of their criminal instincts run wild and concoct pretexts for their malicious acts, we might miss out on the moments they are stealing the appropriate junctures, impersonate a god and usurp the spirit of religious beliefs. (“No longer in the middle?”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses."

"Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted.

"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.”
― Daniel Gilbert

“When civilians are not asked to pay any price, it's easy to be at war - not just to intervene in a foreign land in the first place, but to keep on fighting there. The justifications for staying at war don't have to be particularly rational or cogently argued when so few Americans are making the sacrifice that it takes to stay.”
― Rachel Maddow, Drift

“There are no villains who doesn't have his reasons.”
― Orson Welles

“You can rationalize anything, but that is not total honesty, only your version of it based on your upbringing and experiences outside of everyone else's reality.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!”
― Louis Yako

“Spies are, by nature and necessity, pathological liars who strive to make their endgames justify their meanness.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Cheating, disloyalty, unfaithfulness—they start out as little things justified by clever reasonings of the brain, but never do they fully convince the knowing heart.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“Life really hasn't been very fair to you, Pete. I'm sorry about that."
"Mom says life isn't fair, and that's all there is to it."
"Your mom says that to justify the fact that *she* isn't being fair to *you*," Mrs. Grace said calmly. "which is mostly what people mean when they say life isn't fair. It isn't, which is why people should endeavour to be *more* fair to one another, not less.”
― Kate Quinn, The Briar Club

“A lie is my attempt to tamper with the truth so that I need not face the truth. Yet as shrewd as I think myself to be, I would be wise to understand that God designed truth as ultimately tamper-proof.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus

“I got this month's delivery bill today - you're practically living off pastries!"

"The pastries are easier on my teeth," Grandpa called after him with a smile.

"That wouldn't be an issue if you would get new teeth!" John's voice carried in from the kitchen.

Grandpa pretended not to hear him. His memory might have gone to shit, but there were a few things about being old that he really enjoyed.”
― April Adams, Drawing the Dragon

“If we were to behave half as well as we believe others ought to behave, we might prove ourselves as grand in character as excuses and justifications prevent us from being.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year

“Labeling something as impossible is frequently my way of excusing myself from doing something simply because it’s more difficult than I would like it to be.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Don’t fool yourself with destructive ideals cloaked in clever justifications or soothingly wrapped in smooth verbiage. For in the end, these are not the things that fool you. Rather, it is the fact that you’ve granted them permission to fool you.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Reason is an outcome of frailty and resentment. When Will fails to cope with the labour of life, or the life of labour, its fragile remnants are set to construct a slighter world of justifications.”
― Raheel Farooq

“I don't work often enough to justify not working enough.”
― Abran Martinez

“Widespread justification formulate the most significant obstacles on the way to achieving a dream”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Eliminating all complications, all vexations. Without this protective obsession, no serenity. And without serenity, no lucidity.

To condemn torture as being in any case useless and unproductive is the most despicable of arguments. The implication is that if it were productive (in terms of information), it would be justified. The same with racism: to argue that there is no objective basis for racial differences is to imply that if there were such a basis, racism would be justified. Now, even if there were one, not only would it still be unjustified, but it is then that it would be absolutely unjustifiable.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“I think it’s also important to remember that all excesses come from somewhere. Whatever irrational or evil act we observe likely felt reasonable, even virtuous, to the person who did it. (Keith is on a roll, until he isn’t.) I think any of us could become such a person under the right (wrong) conditions. Otherwise, history is just a bunch of inexcusable things being done by morons who were nothing like us. And there’s nowhere to go with that.”
― George Saunders

“He was quick to rationalize the necessity of these unfortunate casualties, but it did not escape his notice that every justification he mounted was eerily similar to the ones that Marat used to execute his own barbarism.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel

“In our world today ‘user-error’ seems to turn into ‘user-habit’ with the user in the habit of denying both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Do I hate the speech? Or do I hate the truth within the speech?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Men of war will always create narratives that serve to justify the unjustifiable horrors of terror unleashed. And a man of peace will know that to argue the narrative is to further feed that narrative in the minds of those who created it, thereby heightening the horrors that those narratives justify. Therefore, a man of peace must destroy the narrative by utilizing the very horrors that they justify.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“To think that you can create your own truth is to assume a power that you don’t have that will ensure a future that you don’t want.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Not long ago he had turned sixty, an age when people hunger for a moment, however small, that will justify the years they have spent and those that still remain to them.”
― Kevin Brockmeier, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories

“Concepts like trauma and safety have expanded so far since the 1980s that they are often employed in ways that are no longer grounded in legitimate psychological research. Grossly expanded conceptions of trauma and safety are now used to justify the overprotection of children of all ages-- even college students”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“I justified my wrongs,
Apology lost its song.”
― Amogh Swamy, On My Way To Infinity: A Seeker's Poetic Pilgrimage

“The third shooting happened at a kosher grocery store abut twenty minutes from my house. Antisemitic screeds found in the attacker’ vehicle and in their social media postings told a different story, as did the tactical gear they wore, the massive stash of ammunition and firearm they brought along, and security camera footage showing them driving slowly down the street, checking addresses before parking and entering the market with guns blazing. The real targets, authorities surmised, were likely the fifty Jewish children in the private elementary school at the same address, directly above the store – huddled in closets, listening to their neighbors being murdered. Reporting within hours of the attack gave surprising emphasis to the murdered Jews as “gentrifying” a “minority” neighborhood This was remarkable, given that the tiny Hasidic community in question, highly visible members of the word’s most visible members of the world’s most consistently persecuted minority, came to Jersey City fleeing gentrification, after being priced out of long-established Hasidic communities in Brooklyn. The “context” supplied by news outlets after this attack was breathtaking in its cruelty. The sole motivation for providing such “context” in that moment is to inform the public that those people got what was coming to them. People who think of themselves as educated and ethical don’t do this because it is both factually untrue and morally wrong. But if we’re talking about Hasidic Jews, it is quite literally a different story.”
― Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present