We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means.
Approaches to determining stock values vary, but fundamentally, each company judging itself undervalued is saying that its future stream of earnings justifies a higher price than the stock market is willing to accord it.
There’s always been some moron-who usually went by the name of ‘producer’ – who would have to justify his existence, and interfere.
No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.
No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets’ view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.
How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?
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?
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
I can pretty much justify anything as work if I’m reading the news or whatever.
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.
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?
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
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.
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.
Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past.
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.
As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life’s work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.
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.
I don’t have to justify myself. I work a lot and I earn a lot.
I’m avoiding having an assistant because then I would become the horrible boss. I can’t justify having an assistant as a 25-year-old; I just can’t do it!
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.
I do think faith is important when it introduces positivity into your life and you see it with love in your heart because there’s so many people who unfortunately use faith for detrimental things or to justify detrimental actions.
It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.
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.
The trick is to try and justify every word on the page and make sure my character is the man who would say that.
Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire to stay in office and not by any philosophy that might justify their doing so.
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
You shouldn’t have to justify your work.
Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn’t have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.
Doesn’t the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes.
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.
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.
Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
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.
Racists are irrational and illogical in their attempts to justify their prejudices.
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.
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.
In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could 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 are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.
Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions.
The ends must justify the means.
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?
There’s no way I can justify my salary level, but I’m learning to live with it.
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.
Even if certain rogue countries do things we wish nobody did, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their foolishness should justify our following suit.
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.
It’s more fun to arrive a conclusion than to justify it.
As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.
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.
Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you’re seeing justifies the conclusions you’re making.
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.
I know that I can cook well on a low budget so I can’t really justify spending a fortune on food.
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.
The true test of whether Mr. Obama has improved on the Bush era lies in how his administration justifies its decisions on the 241 remaining Guantanamo detainees, whose cases will now be evaluated internally and reviewed by the courts.
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.
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.’
What amazes me is how far some people will go to justify their behavior to themselves, just to preserve that self-perception.
