#justify

As many will remember, a respected Army Corps economist filed a whistleblower complaint about the Corps' use of faulty data to justify lock and dam expansion. ↗

— Ron Kind

#army #complaint #corps #dam #data

People will justify whatever for a good cause. ↗

— Julie Taymor

#good #good cause #justify #people #whatever

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend--or to keep one. ↗

— Robert E. Lee

#means-justifying-the-ends #moral-courage #courage

You cannot have the right to do what is wrong! ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#means-justifying-the-ends #moral-courage #courage

One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. ↗

— Maureen Dowd

#clearly #justify #must #nature #rather

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. ↗

— Neil Sheehan

#carry #could #excuse #good #i

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. ↗

— John Shelby Spong

#centuries #christian #christian church #christians #church

The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity. ↗

— Richard Stallman

#depriving #desire #does #general #justify

In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty... to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all... well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law, they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#genius #greatness #the-ends-justify-the-means #utilitarianism #marketing

...Imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#means-justifying-the-ends #profound #religion #sublime #imagination