Quotes About Judgment

What public opinion permits us to judge and even to condemn are trends, or whole groups of people--the larger the better--in short, something so general that distinctions can no longer be made, names no longer named. Needless to add, this taboo applies doubly when the deeds or words of famous people or men in high position are being questioned.

At that moment, I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt." Who was he to judge? Who was he "to have [his] own thoughts in this matter"? Well, he was neither the first nor the last to be ruined by modesty.

Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. (Robert H. Jackson, Justice at Nuremberg)

Hannah Arendt

Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil." — Hannah Arendt

La razón por la que puede ser prudente desconfiar del juicio político de los científicos no es fundamentalmente su falta de carácter—que n o se negaran a desarrollar armas atómicas—o su ingenuidad—que no entendieran que una vez desarrolladas dichas armas serían los últimos en ser consultados sobre su empleo—, sino concretamente el hecho de que se mueven en un mundo donde el discurso ha perdido su poder.

As Tony Judt wrote a few years ago in The New York Review of Books,8 Arendt made many small errors for which her critics will never forgive her. But she got many of the big things right and for this she deserves to be remembered.

Qui si devono giudicare le sue azioni, non le sofferenze degli ebrei, non il popolo tedesco o l'umanità, e neppure l'antisemitismo e il razzismo

Justice, but not mercy, is a matter of judgment

On politics] And a people that can no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

I have a good eye, said Benjamin. Most of the time I can look at a person and see their whole life. Small things give them away. That farmer, for instance. I could tell by the way he tied his shoes that he'd never traveled more than twenty miles from his home, and it was unlikely that he'd follow us for long. And that Father John of yours. I knew he had something hidden in that sleeve. And I knew he'd use it on you. The only thing I didn't know was if you deserved it.

The opposite of "slut" is someone who has not been labeled a slut, someone who has never been charged with violating doxa.

In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.

No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.

At his next visit he fancied he must have got into a narrow needlecase, full of sharp needles: "Oh," thought he, "this must be the heart of an old maid;" but such was not the fact;

I looked for a man among them who would … stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none" (Ezek. 22:30).

I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.

Man may be evil or good, that wasn't the issue. The issue was that man rarely considered the consequences of his actions. In short, man was often just plain stupid.

They would claim that she was either delusional or naïve to the point of a learning disability.

You want to put people in neat categories, make them monsters or angels, but it almost never works that way. You work in the gray and frankly that kinda sucks. The extremes are so much easier.

racial profiling. We all do it. If you cross the street to avoid a gang of black teens, you're racial profiling; if you don't cross because you're afraid you'll look like a racist, you're racial profiling; if you see the gang and think nothing whatsoever, you're from some planet I've never visited.

Man may be evil or good, that wasn't the issue. The issue was that man rarely considered the consequences of his actions.

Perception is often more important than reality.

We stayed a step behind the three boys. Every once in a while they would turn around and look at us, wondering, I guess, why we were following them. Sometimes they stared openly at Ema. There may have been derision in their eyes, I couldn't say for sure. Ema was decked out in her customary black—black clothes, black hair, black nail polish, black lipstick. Tattoos ran up and down her arms and across her neck. I