Quotes About Justification

We should have understood long ago that there is, in this world, religion without God, religion as a center of all idols that possess fallen man, religion that is the justification for these idols.

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.

In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.

it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists

It seems to me that if you can't make a good solid case for your faith, you don't have a religion, you just have a habit.

Right, left, Greens, Baathists, whatever: it comes down to grabbing and holding power and using ideology - or religion, race - as a justification.

Only religion could justify killing an adult with a family because he carried out abortions of unwanted or unhealthy fetuses that don't even have the intelligence of a typical fish.

The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives for acts of violence that bring them no tangible benefit.

We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies.

People will use their religion to justify virtually anything.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

there should be no love just because, but only 'love because of.

Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case; and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands.

It was all right that I should try to justify my honest feelings by all sorts of rationalizations. But sometimes the multifarious motives that my brain spun out would force feelings on me that came as a shock even to myself; and those feelings were not originally my own. Only in my hatred was there something authentic. For I myself was a person who should be moved with hate.

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology. The ideology justifies the costs of the research. In exchange, the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines what to do with the discoveries.

How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is biology enables, culture forbids. Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It's culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others.

A priest is not somebody who knows how to perform the rain dance and end the drought. A priest is somebody who knows how to justify why the rain dance failed, and why we must keep believing in our god even though he seems deaf to all our prayers.

A verdadeira especialidade dos sacerdotes e dos gurus nunca foi provocar a chuva, curar, fazer profecias ou magia. A sua especialidade foi sempre a interpretação. Um sacerdote não é alguém que sabe fazer uma dança da chuva para pôr fim à seca. Um sacerdote é alguém que sabe justificar por que motivo a dança da chuva não resultou, e por que motivo devemos continuar a acreditar no nosso deus apesar de ele parecer ignorar as nossas orações.

We are conquering you for your own benefit,' said the Persians.

Even universities and laboratories need religious backing. Religion provides the ethical justification for scientific research, and in exchange gets to influence the scientific agenda and the uses of scientific discoveries. Hence you cannot understand the history of science without taking religious beliefs into account. Scientists seldom dwell on this fact, but the Scientific Revolution itself began in one of the most dogmatic, intolerant and religious societies in history.