Justifying Quotes - page 2
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.
Doris Lessing
Accommodationists further accuse scientists of having "faith in reason.” Yet reason is not an a priori assumption, but a tool that's been shown to work. We don't have faith in reason; we use reason, and we use it because it produces results and progressive understanding...
Reason is simply the way we justify our beliefs, and if you're not using it, whether you're justifying religious or scientific beliefs, you deserve no one's attention.
Jerry Coyne
The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. I need not say that I am not here justifying any excess. Principles the most sacred may be abused: the wisdom of government should guide its operations according to circumstances, it should time its measures, choose its means; for the manner of bringing about great things is an essential part of the talent of producing them, just as wisdom is an essential attribute of virtue....
Maximilien Robespierre
The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.
John Stuart Mill
The fact is that we have realized that in labour disputes the use of violence plays into the hands of the ruling classes justifying the reaction of the military and discrediting the forces from below. Besides the refusal to use violence achieves the possibility of establishing even international solidarities of a very wide range.
Aldo Capitini
It is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do.
The void is soon filled. Behavior like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but I doubt that it would be run if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive.
Paul Goodman
Language death is a terrible loss, to all who come into contact with it: `Facing the loss of language or culture involves the same stages of grief that one experiences in the process of death and dying.”‘ We do not have to be members of an endangered community to sense this grief, or respond to it. Anyone who has worked with these communities, even over a short period, knows that it is a genuine insight, well justifying the dramatic nature of the analogy. And it is this keen, shared sense of loss which fuels the motivation and commitment of linguists, community groups, and support organizations in many parts of the world.
David Crystal
Tolstoy ... believed that property claims were based on robbery and maintained by violence. More radical than second-century radical Christians and than most monks, he turned even against the subdivision of labor in economic society. It seemed to him to be the means by which privileged persons such as artists, intellectuals, and their kind, absorbed the labor of others, justifying themselves by the belief that they were beings of a higher order than workingmen, or that their contribution to society was so great that it compensated for their claims.
H. Richard Niebuhr
Currency competition and free banking might increase the efficiency of the financial system, and bring some small triangle welfare gains. But the key question is whether their adoption would improve macroeconomic performance. Even though Salin argues (p. 281) that ‘the best system is that which produces the least inflation', fluctuations in output are also expensive.
Hayek states that the adoption of his proposal would end recessions. There is absolutely no reason to believe that. Nineteenth century history is evidence that free banking and currency issue, in the wrong legal and regulatory framework, can produce rather than reduce instability. The proponents of free banking and currency issue in this volume do not go much beyond a general belief in competition in justifying their views; they have certainly not explored the necessary legal and regulatory environment in any detail.
Stanley Fischer
To Marx any talk of rights possessed by people equally, unalienably, absolutely, and universally would have to await the communist epoch when all persons will have reached a common nature, total equality and perfection. Until then people are in a state of incompletion and imperfection, incapable of justifying equal human rights.
Tibor R. Machan
