Justify Your Actions Quotes

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys. No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

I have never claimed to live by any set of principles," Warner says to me. "I've never claimed to be right, or good, or even justified in my actions. I have been forced to do terrible things in my life, love, and I am seeking neither your forgiveness nor your approval. Because I do not have the luxury of philosophizing over scruples when I'm forced to act on basic instinct every day.

When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of "second chances". Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Your future doesn’t have to travel the same path with the same people. You can start over. You don’t have to apologize to people that won’t listen. You don’t have to justify your feelings or actions, during a difficult time in your life. You don’t have to put up with people that are insecure and want you to fail. All you have to do is walk forward with a positive outlook, and trust that God has a plan that is greater than the sorrow you left behind. The people of quality that were meant to be in your life won’t need you to explain the beauty of your heart. They already understand what being human is----a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.

Dear Child, Sometimes on your travel through hell, you meet people that think they are in heaven because of their cleverness and ability to get away with things. Travel past them because they don't understand who they have become and never will. These type of people feel justified in revenge and will never learn mercy or forgiveness because they live by comparison. They are the people that don't care about anyone, other than who is making them feel confident. They don’t understand that their deity is not rejoicing with them because of their actions, rather he is trying to free them from their insecurities, by softening their heart. They rather put out your light than find their own. They don't have the ability to see beyond the false sense of happiness they get from destroying others. You know what happiness is and it isn’t this. Don’t see their success as their deliverance. It is a mask of vindication which has no audience, other than their own kind. They have joined countless others that call themselves “survivors”. They believe that they are entitled to win because life didn’t go as planned for them. You are not like them. You were not meant to stay in hell and follow their belief system. You were bound for greatness. You were born to help them by leading. Rise up and be the light home. You were given the gift to see the truth. They will have an army of people that are like them and you are going to feel alone. However, your family in heaven stands beside you now. They are your strength and as countless as the stars. It is time to let go! Love, Your Guardian Angel

You can't always expect people to apply your wisdom when they didn't use wisdom before they found themselves knee deep in their version of justice.

Let go of feelings of guilt and the need to justify your actions.

It never ceases to amaze me the precious time we spend chasing the squirrels around our brains, playing out our dramas, worrying about unwanted facial hair, seeking adoration, justifying our actions, complaining about slow Internet connections, dissecting the lives of idiots, when we are sitting in the middle of a full-blown miracle that is happening right here, right now. We're on a planet that somehow knows how to rotate on its axis and follow a defined path while it hurtles through space! Our hearts beat! We can see! We have love, laughter, language, living rooms, computers, compassion, cars, fire, fingernails, flowers, music, medicine, mountains, muffins!

You can’t judge an entire population of a people by the actions of a select few. You can’t use your grief and your sorrow to justify your hate and your discrimination.

When you justify (show or prove that your wrong actions are right or reasonable), you magnify the negative.

The opposite of creation is not destruction but JUSTIFICATION. If you don’t have what you want, you have been justifying (trying to prove your wrong actions are right), not creating.

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?

When bad things are happening to you, you need to know you are justifying (trying to show or prove that your wrong actions are right or reasonable).

You religious men who boast so much that you live on charity including what the poor manage to scrape together out of their meagre income - how can you justify your actions? How can your moral conscience be clear when you acknowledge that in no way do you contribute to the society that is maintaining you, day after day? In your self complacent conceit, you denigrate and harshly condemn, those who, with their sweat and hard work, provide you with a life fit for a king. What is the reason you spend your lives living comfortably in some ashram or isolated monastery when life only makes sense if it is experienced with your fellow brothers and sisters by showing compassion to them? It is easy and simple enough to spend your lives meditating in the Himalayas being irritated by nothing and no one if not the occasional goat, rather than placing yourselves in the midst of your fellow men and living an ordinary life of toil as they do. Do not delude yourselves, because what you refer to as a state of internal peace represents nothing but the personal satisfaction of the conscious ego that is admiring and adoring itself..

The central attitudes driving the Victim are: Everybody has done me wrong, especially the women I’ve been involved with. Poor me. When you accuse me of being abusive, you are joining the parade of people who have been cruel and unfair to me. It proves you’re just like the rest. It’s justifiable for me to do to you whatever I feel you are doing to me, and even to make it quite a bit worse to make sure you get the message. Women who complain of mistreatment by men, such as relationship abuse or sexual harassment, are anti-male and out for blood. I’ve had it so hard that I’m not responsible for my actions.

Let go of feelings of guilt and the need to justify your actions. To let go of guilt, it is enough to give yourself permission to be yourself.

People who see themselves as “good” are much more likely to do “evil” things. This is because believing you are the “good guy” allows you to define your actions as good because you are the one doing them. This is why many successful cultures frame humans as intrinsically wretched. It can seem harsh to raise a child to believe deeply in their own wretchedness, but doing so helps them remember to always second-guess themselves by remembering their lesser, selfishly motivated instincts. Instincts that run counter to your morality and values have every bit as much access to your intelligence as “the better angels” of your consciousness and will use your own knowledge and wit to justify their whims. You can’t outreason your worst impulses without stacking the deck in your favor. Coming from a culture that anticipates bad impulses and steels you against them can do that. That said, cultures will no doubt develop different, less harsh mechanisms for achieving the same outcome.

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future. 2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent. 3. Stop imagining. Experience the real. 4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see. 5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge. 6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness. 7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image. 8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts. 9. Surrender to being as you are.

You liars are all the same. It’s amazing how no matter the circumstance, people like you find a way to justify your actions with the same cliché reason.

Although you feel relief now, this is likely to be the source of many sleepless nights for you. You will lie awake, look upon your heart, and find it unlovely. You will be certain that (...) you are the greatest of monsters. This is a good thing; although you may forgive yourself, you must never come to think that your actions were in any way justifiable. But- (...) Being a sane, honorable human being is not always comfortable.

You are not a victim. You are a willing participant that has created your own anxiety through your negative mind, insecurities and actions. If you want to secure your future then the only way is through love, forgiveness and the willingness to admit you have participated in the uncomfortableness you are experiencing now. Stop telling yourself you are justified in hate, indifference, silence or bias. You are not. You can't build a positive life through battling others. The world is full of victims. No one wants to hear that story. People want to know how you did what the majority wouldn't do-you forgave and built up your enemies. It is seems totally rare and unheard of these days to swallow your pain and take the high road, but guess what? Those are the leaders that people admire and want to know. Those are the 1% who change the world and people's lives. So why do you want to be like the world when you can be beyond it?

You will never be able to end any battle if the people involved are unable to see their own hypocrisy, or how their insecurity contributed to their problems. Wounded people often choose to play the victim, so they can restore their dignity in unhealthy ways. Sadly, they do this through feeling justified, by making bad choices or actions (that honestly no diety would want them to do). This inability to accept their part in their unhappiness keeps them from growing. They need your prayers more than your anger. Just walk away. Let it go and pray that one day they will understand your pain, as much as you do theirs. Remember: The sexiest woman alive is one that can walk away from a place that God doesn't want them to be. Do so with your head held high and forgive yourself and others. When you can do this, you will know what God's definition of class is-- YOU!

Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions. To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer. • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses. • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others. • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields. • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives. • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.

Humans have a very clear idea about how to behave, and on many occasions actually do. But it’s sometimes disheartening that correct action is drowned out by endless chitter-chatter, designed not to find a way forward but to justify petty jealousies and illogically held prejudices. If you’re going to talk, try to make it relevant, useful and progressive rather than simply distracting and time-wasting nonsense, intended only to justify the untenable and postpone the real dialogue that needs to happen.

You think because you are born of light that you're somehow better and kinder than those who aren't, but you're not. It merely makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But, you're no better than my mother. If anything you're worse because you think your viciousness is justified...

In reality, at the time I was being incredibly negative and seeing things worse than they were. I was using my pessimism as a shield. It was my feeble attempt at protecting myself from the pain of failed expectations: I’d do anything to keep from being disappointed once again. But in adopting this pattern, this same barrier that kept me out of pain also kept me out of pleasure. It barred me from solutions and sealed me in a tomb of emotional death where one never experiences too much pain or too much pleasure, and where one continuously justifies one’s limited actions by stating they’re “just being realistic.

When we get hurt, our bodies immediately start trying to heal that hurt. This works for emotions as well. If we were scarred socially, by an incident of rejection or bullying, we immediately start trying to heal. Like pus comes out of wounds, emotions flow from psychological wounds. And what do we really need at that moment? When we are out of that dangerous situation that scarred us, and we become triggered by some little thing - what do we need? Do we need someone to look at us and say, "Wow, you're really sensitive, aren't you?" or "Hey, man, I didn't mean it like that."? Do we need someone to justify their actions or tell us to take it easy, because the situation didn't really require such a reaction? And, from ourselves, do we really need four pounds of judgment with liberal helpings of shame? Do we need to run away, to suppress, to hate our "over-sensitivity" to situations that seem innocuous to others? No. We do not need all of these versions of rejection of a natural healing process. You would not feel shame over a wound doing what it must do to heal, nor would you shame another. So why do we do this to our heart wounds? Why do we do it to ourselves? To others? Next time some harmless situation triggers you or someone around you into an intense emotion - realize it's an attempt at emotional healing. Realize the danger is no longer there, but don't suppress the healing of old dangers and old pains. Allow the pain. Don't react, but don't repress. Embrace the pain. Embrace the pain of others. Like this, we have some chance at healing the endless cycles of generational repression and suppression that are rolling around in our society. Fall open. Break open. Sit with others' openness. Let love be your medicine.

Isn’t it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment? We say, “Well, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____.” Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I – or anyone else – decide to give in to “rational excuses” that justify feeling bad – it’s interesting that only further suffering is the result. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights… and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn… yet if we’re aware of what we are doing and we’re ready to let go of the suffering – then why go there at all? It’s like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that… so why do we keep repeating it? Pain is going to happen; it’s inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day… and the next day… into next week… maybe next month… and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves! Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go! Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to “go there.” The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It’s only fair! It’s never my fault; it’s always someone else’s. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it. I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever “go there” again. It’s my choice; it’s your choice. So it’s about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it’s time to stop acting like we don’t. It’s time to relinquish the excuses.

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

What shall I do with my parents? Act such that your actions justify the suffering they endured. To act to justify the suffering of your parents is to remember all the sacrifices that all the others who lived before you (not least your parents) have made for you in all the course of the terrible past, to be grateful for all the progress that has been thereby made, and then to act in accordance with that remembrance & gratitude. People sacrificed immensely to bring about what we have now. In many cases, they literally died for it - & we should act with some respect for that fact.

Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are right and just in their actions. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because he believed that God had commanded it. To kill your son is unthinkable. A crime. But if you are acting in the belief that your God, your supreme deity whom you must obey, has demanded it of you, is it still a crime?” “Yes,” Will said. Dr. Poblocki smiled. “I know you do not believe, Will. But imagine for a moment that you believe fervently that this is truth. In this framework, your actions are justified. Glorified, even. They are inculpatus—without blame.

There is no such thing as a relationship without a contract. All relationships are governed by contracts, be they implied or explicit. Relationship contracts are not legal contracts, though sometimes societal expectations of relationships get worked into law (this can come into play in situations like divorce as well as the legal establishment and relinquishment of paternity). The society in which you grew up provided you with a set of template contracts to which you implicitly agree whenever you enter a relationship, even a non-sexual one. For example, a common clause of many societal template contracts among friends involves agreeing to not sleep with a friend's recent ex. While you may never explicitly agree to not sleep with a friend's ex, your friend will absolutely feel violated if they discover that you shacked up with the person who dumped them just a week earlier. Essentially, these social contracts tell an individual when they have “permission” to have specific emotional reactions. While this may not seem that impactful, these default standards can have a significant impact on one’s life. For example, in the above reaction, a friend who just got angry out of the blue at a member of their social group would be ostracized by others within the group while a friend who became angry while citing the “they slept with my ex” contract violation may receive social support from the friend group and internally feel more justified in their retaliatory action. To ferret out the contractual aspects of relationships in which you currently participate, think through something a member of that relationship might do that would have you feeling justifiably violated, even though they never explicitly agreed to never take such action. This societal system of template contracts may have worked in a culturally and technologically homogenous world without frequent travel, but within the modern world, assumed template contracts cause copious problems.

To live in the way of the Gestalt: 1. Live now. Concern yourself with the present before the past or the future. 2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent. 3. Stop imagining. Experience the real. 4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see. 5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge. 6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness. 7. Accept no "should" or "must" other than your own. Adore no idol. 8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts. 9. Accept being as you are.

Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you vote or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior. This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.

For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.

A bad life doesn't justify bad behavior. It's time to stop playing the blame game and take responsibility for your own actions. You have control of your life from here.

It never ceases to amaze me the precious time we spend chasing the squirrels around our brains, playing out our dramas, worrying about unwanted facial hair, seeking adoration, justifying our actions, complaining about slow Internet connections, dissecting the lives of idiots, when we are sitting in the middle of a full-blown miracle that is happening right here, right now.

Julia Bliss Flaherty, as Ivy now realized, was of the same stripe. Pinned down and obliged to justify herself, she would explain her actions in terms of some altruistic plan. And she might even believe it. But it wasn’t that at all. She was like Ivy’s grandmother. If you paid fealty to her, she would favor you, and your reputation and power would grow among all the others who did likewise.

But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.

I have never claimed to live by any set of principles. I've never claimed to be right, or good, or even justified in my actions. The simple truth is that I do not care. I have been forced to do terrible things in my life, love, and I am seeking neither your forgiveness nor your approval. Because I do not have the luxury of philosophizing over scruples when I'm forced to act on basic instinct every day.

You think such an attitude is admirable. Manly, heroic even. 'Lived harmlessly.' 'Kept to himself.' Hide away somewhere and your past will cease to exist. You won't have to account for it. You'll feel no obligation to explain your actions or justify them because you've gone away and you expect your victims to go away too. It's like leaving the scene of an accident . . . Or a marriage. Even a field of battle.

Karma is impossible to escape, or overcome. This is because it is both objective, and subjective. Even if you can convince others that your bad actions are justified, you can never convince yourself, for a long period.

Giving respect means to do no harm; to allow others their rights in expressing themselves; and to honor the fact that their own thoughts, feelings, and actions are real and justifiable in their own minds, even if we see them as unimportant or wrong. Respect does not necessarily mean approval; one can respect another’s right to speak but not necessarily approve of what is spoken. Respect means that we see others as doing their best with what they have, who they are, and what hand they’ve been dealt, even if we find their efforts wanting in any way. It means seeing the divinity in others, and never inviting disrespect into our lives by projecting disrespect onto others.

Word of caution: try not to get so caught up in the action that you shoot the idiot who keeps knocking on your front door! “He should have waited until the commercial break,” won’t earn you an acquittal for justifiable homicide.

You use words written by men to justify your actions? TO question whether or not you are damned? We damn ourselves. There is no justifying evil, it simply is. Just as there is no purpose in flaunting good deeds. It is the mark that it leaves on our souls that is pertinent. You dare to deny the freedom of will you were given? And yet you call yourself a believer... You want proof of the divine? You want something significant? Something to solidify your faith? Believe in life.

Things I've Learned in 18 Years of Life   1) True love is not something found, rather [sic] something encountered. You can’t go out and look for it. The person you marry and the person you love could easily be two different people. So have a beautiful life while waiting for God to bring along your once-in-a-lifetime love. Don't allow yourself to settle for anything less than them. Stop worrying about who you're going to marry because God's already on the front porch watching your grandchildren play.   2) God WILL give you more than you can handle, so you can learn to lean on him in times of need. He won't tempt you more than you can handle, though. So don't lose hope. Hope anchors the soul.   3) Remember who you are and where you came from. Remember that you are not from this earth. You are a child of heaven, you're invaluable, you are beautiful. Carry yourself that way.   4) Don't put your faith in humanity, humanity is inherently flawed. We are all imperfect people created and loved by a perfect God. Perfect. So put your faith in Him.   5) I fail daily, and that is why I succeed.   6) Time passes, and nothing and everything changes. Don't live life half asleep. Don't drag your soul through the days. Feel everything you do. Be there physically and mentally. Do things that make you feel this way as well.   7) Live for beauty. We all need beauty, get it where you can find it. Clothing, paintings, sculptures, music, tattoos, nature, literature, makeup. It's all art and it's what makes us human. Same as feeling the things we do. Stay human.   8) If someone makes you think, keep them. If someone makes you feel, keep them.   9) There is nothing the human brain cannot do. You can change anything about yourself that you want to. Fight for it. It's all a mental game.   10) God didn’t break our chains for us to be bound again. Alcohol, drugs, depression, addiction, toxic relationships, monotony and repetition, they bind us. Break those chains. Destroy your past and give yourself new life like God has given you.   11) This is your life. Your struggle, your happiness, your sorrow, and your success. You do not need to justify yourself to anyone. You owe no one an explanation for the choices that you make and the position you are in. In the same vein, respect yourself by not comparing your journey to anyone else's.   12) There is no wrong way to feel.   13) Knowledge is everywhere, keep your eyes open. Look at how diverse and wonderful this world is. Are you going to miss out on beautiful people, places, experiences, and ideas because you are close-minded? I sure hope not.   14) Selfless actions always benefit you more than the recipient.   15) There is really no room for regret in this life. Everything happens for a reason. If you can't find that reason, accept there is one and move on.   16) There is room, however, for guilt. Resolve everything when it first comes up. That's not only having integrity, but also taking care of your emotional well-being.   17) If the question is ‘Am I strong enough for this?’ The answer is always, ‘Yes, but not on your own.’   18) Mental health and sanity above all.   19) We love because He first loved us. The capacity to love is the ultimate gift, the ultimate passion, euphoria, and satisfaction. We have all of that because He first loved us. If you think about it in those terms, it is easy to love Him. Just by thinking of how much He loves us.   20) From destruction comes creation. Beauty will rise from the ashes.   21) Many things can cause depression. Such as knowing you aren't becoming the person you have the potential to become. Choose happiness and change. The sooner the better, and the easier.   22) Half of happiness is as simple as eating right and exercising. You are one big chemical reaction. So are your emotions. Give your body the right reactants to work with and you'll be satisfied with the products.

What if I told you I was a bad person, once?” Justin’s voice was low; it was almost lost in the whirring of their tire spokes. Carly thought about it. “I’d say you’re even more amazing for being able to change. Most can’t, you know. Most bad people justify their actions, at least to themselves. I bet if you took a poll, very, very few people would say they’re bad. They’re good people with bad circumstances, they’d say. And even those who seek forgiveness in religion or in the secular world don’t always manage to change themselves. That takes a massive amount of effort. Not many are able to accomplish it because it’s just too hard, or maybe they didn’t really want to change in the first place. They just wanted justification.” Justin laughed softly. “And you say you’re not smart.

We can talk about love and write a thousand books about it, but love will be completely different for each of us because we have to experience love. Love is not about concepts; love is about action. Love in action can only produce happiness. Fear in action can only produce suffering. The only way to master love is to practice love. You don’t need to justify your love, you don’t need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.

Some paranormal activity can be justifiably explained as a cognitive action. “It’s all in your mind,” as some would say. And sometimes it is, as I will explain soon. The human brain is one of the frontiers that we still do not fully understand, and there are certainly phenomena that can be explained as tricks of the mind. Apparitions moving out of the corner of the eye are especially open to skepticism because it’s been proven that objects on a person’s periphery can seem to move when they’re not.

I’m not condemning anyone’s personal beliefs. I honestly don’t care if they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah or the Tooth Fairy. But if that faith tells them to do harm to others, I have a big fucking issue with it. Millions, hell, probably billions of people throughout history have been killed in the name of one religion or the other. Just because you put your particular brand of God on it or drop enough Bible verses into your hate-filled rants to convince people, doesn’t make your actions any more justified.

It can be very helpful if you keep a notebook to record your observations. It helps you to remember them more fully and with more accuracy. What did you say; how did you react; what were your motives; what were your actions; what emotional states were you in; did you pretend; did you lie by omission or by commission; were you insincere; did you justify yourself; did you gossip or slander anyone; did you have any moment of self-awareness at all or did you sleep-walk through your day wasting every opportunity to awaken?

100 Percent of the Time Is Easier Than 98 Percent of the Time Many of us have convinced ourselves that we are able to break our own personal rules “just this once.” In our minds, we can justify these small choices. None of those things, when they first happen, feels like a life-changing decision. The marginal costs are almost always low. But each of those decisions can roll up into a much bigger picture, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to be. That instinct to just use the marginal costs hides from us the true cost of our actions.

But if you are a sufficiently great and important person, it is necessary that you should be spared small annoyances. If a fly settles on your forehead again and again, maddening you by its tickling--what do you do? You endeavour to kill that fly. You have no qualms about it. You are important--the fly is not. You kill the fly and the annoyance ceases. Your action appears to you sane and justifiable. Another reason for killing a fly is if you have a strong passion for hygiene. The fly is a potential source of danger to the community--the fly must go. So works the mind of the mentally deranged criminal.

Mediocre people are a drag on quality and morale, but they tend to do just enough good work to stick around—managers have a tough time justifying letting them go because there’s no actionable offense. The scent of mediocrity on your team can also scare off talented candidates. Mediocrity is an albatross we tether ourselves to when we don’t give the hiring process our full attention. When you hire, look for skill fit, but don’t make it your primary evaluation criteria. Look for passion, curiosity, selflessness, openness, confidence, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and intrinsic motivation, too. These things can’t be taught—most skills can.

The theory I will present, based on some well-established science as well as some new science and some speculative ideas, states that the universe is neither friendly, hostile, nor indifferent to us. Rather, it is responsive. We live in a cosmos that responds to our actions by bringing us more of the same. To oversimplify for a moment, if we act friendly to the world, we find that circumstances emerge that reinforce our belief that the world is friendly. Similarly, if we act hostile to the world, we find our perspective justified because events arise that confirm our preconceived notions. When we align with circumstances, circumstances align with us. We can call this flow.

Remove this quote from your collection “No one is perfect. This is the naked truth we all have to accept. And who the hell has said there are perfect ones, by the way? We won’t ever be perfect. There are Machiavellian aspects (not that worse kind of malicious behavior) in us. One of these aspects is acting obsequiously towards others in order to gain advantage and then backstabbing them in return. I call them fawning parasites. They are the people who are fond of picking unnecessary fights and they don’t care about their actions. What’s important to them is only their side just TO JUSTIFY THEIR MEANS. Oh, I’ve just realized that the world is full of competition and others want to be just perfect jerks.

In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it? But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.

Everyone is in pain. Most people think pain in massage means something is happening, and if they can endure it, they will be improved, but sometimes the only thing pain means is pain. It a very easy mistake to make, though.. She’d refused for the longest time to get therapy or take any psychoactive drugs because she’d felt that the “darkness” was necessary, not just for her as an actor, but as a human being. You didn’t have to feel slightly terrible all the time, as it turns out. Her only worry now was that slightly terrible was not a flaw in her chemistry, but an appropriate response to being the kind of person that she was. “You’re very hard on yourself,” Luke said. “Can you imagine the kind of person that I’d be if I wasn’t hard on myself?” she said back. Luke should be sympathetic. He was hoping to improve the human race, and it would be hard to get there if the human race thought it was already fantastic, thanks very much. Well, she could still go dark, if she needed to, she could go dark right now. Yesterday she had done Terror. She’d done Fear and Dejection and Remorse. And because she had done Remorse as fully as a person could do it, she knew that she hadn’t ever experienced that kind of pure Remorse before. What she’d felt in the past was polluted Remorse, because half the time she was sorry she was also privately resentful and building a case about why the actions that had led to Remorse could be justified.

Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning. If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you'll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas - to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to - then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don't take people's moral arguments at face value. They're mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.

The most important feeling in the world is trust. The worse is betrayal. Without trust, there is no love. Without trust, there is betrayal. And betrayal is the ultimate consequence of selfishness and naiveness, both ramifications of egotism. Whenever you can't confront reality, you can't love and you can't protect yourself against the lack of it. Wisdom can help you, because wisdom consists in the ability to love oneself, confront reality and accept the mistakes of others. That requires courage, but courage without wisdom is foolishness in disguise. You must be wise to see through and remain calm. It is a never-ending goal, and as much as the intensity of the complexities you're faced with. More complexities require more wisdom. Peace can't be found without an action towards it, and solutions that justify it. An antagonistic solution would only present itself as one whenever wisdom has failed. An avatar must be immensely wise to live with himself but not ignorant enough to accept the masses when confronted with their ignorance. However, if you're just a mortal being struggling against endless challenges, pray to God for wisdom, for He will bring forth to your realm His most highly recommended masters and meaningful literature. If you find them, don't judge them by how they appear, look or are dressed. Don't judge them as well by when and where they appear to you. For the unwise does not have the right to judge the mysteries unveiling his own ignorance. And if you find a book in a trashcan, do not judge it as well by where you have found it. Salvation is everywhere. It is wise to believe that. We suffer more due to the immense signs we reject than those we accept.

To those who take this dramatic setting as part of the spiritual instruction and get entangled in the question of the Gita justifying war, Gandhi had a practical answer: just base your life on the Gita sincerely and systematically and see if you find killing or even hurting others compatible with its teachings. (He makes the same point of the Sermon on the Mount.) The very heart of the Gita’s message is to see the Lord in every creature and act accordingly, and the scripture is full of verses to spell out what this means: I am ever present to those who have realized me in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me. They worship me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me. Wherever they may live, they abide in me. (6:30–31) When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union. (6:32)

Don’t be defensive. People will be reluctant to share feedback if they are afraid of hurting your feelings or having to justify their perceptions. Listen carefully. Relax and actively listen to understand what the other person is trying to tell you; be sensitive to how your nonverbal communication is affecting the other person’s willingness to share with you. Suspend judgment. Listen, don’t judge. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say, but rather work to understand what the other person is trying to tell you. Be welcoming and assume that the information is intended to help you be better rather than anything otherwise. Ask questions and ask for examples. Make sure you understand what is being said and learn about the context as well as the content. Say thank you. Let the other person know that you appreciate his or her feedback and that you can’t get any better without knowing more about yourself and how your actions affect others.

People who see themselves as “good” are much more likely to do “evil” things. This is because believing you are the “good guy” allows you to define your actions as good because you are the one doing them. This is why many successful cultures frame humans as intrinsically wretched. It can seem harsh to raise a child to believe deeply in their own wretchedness, but doing so helps them remember to always second-guess themselves by remembering their lesser, selfishly motivated instincts. Instincts that run counter to your morality and values have every bit as much access to your intelligence as “the better angels” of your consciousness and will use your own knowledge and wit to justify their whims. You can’t outreason your worst impulses without stacking the deck in your favor. Coming from a culture that anticipates bad impulses and steels you against them can do that. That said, cultures will no doubt develop different, less harsh mechanisms for achieving the same outcome.

If to a person religion means reading books and obeying every single word from it without the slightest bit of reasoning, then such perception would only bring destruction upon the person and the world. Also there are people who use the words from those books to justify their own filthy actions. Let’s take a conservative Muslim, for example. Say, the conservative Muslim male Homo sapiens (I won’t call such creature a human, regardless of the religion, since his action here shows no sign of humanity) is found to be beating his wife. Now, if someone says to him “this is wrong”, he would naturally reply, “this is a divine thing to do, my book says so”. Now, if a Christian says “my book is older, so you should stop obeying your book and start obeying mine”, there will come the Buddhist, and say, “my book is much older still, obey mine”. Then will come the Jew, and say, “my book is even older, so just follow mine”. And in the end will come the Hindu and say “my books are the oldest of all, obey them”. Therefore referring to books will only make a mess of the human race and tear the species into pieces.

1. Each husband’s section opens with an illustrative moniker (for example, “Poor Ernie Diaz,” “Goddamn Don Adler,” “Agreeable Robert Jamison”). Discuss the meaning and significance of some of these descriptions. How do they set the tone for the section that follows? Did you read these characterizations as coming from Evelyn, Monique, an omniscient narrator, or someone else? 2. Of the seven husbands, who was your favorite, and why? Who surprised you the most? 3. Monique notes that hearing Evelyn Hugo’s life story has inspired her to carry herself differently than she would have before. In what ways does Monique grow over the course of the novel? Discuss whether Evelyn also changes by the end of her time with Monique, and if so, what spurs this evolution. 4. On page 147, Monique says, "I have to 'Evelyn Hugo' Evelyn Hugo." What does it mean to "Evelyn Hugo"? Can you think of a time when you might be tempted to "Evelyn Hugo"? 5. Did you trust Evelyn to be a reliable narrator as you were reading? Why, or why not? Did your opinion on this change at all by the conclusion, and if so, why? 6. What role do the news, tabloid, and blog articles interspersed throughout the book serve in the narrative? What, if anything, do we learn about Evelyn’s relationship to the outside world from them? 7. At several points in the novel, such as pages 82–83 and 175–82, Evelyn tells her story through the second person, “you.” How does this kind of narration affect the reading experience? Why do you think she chooses these memories to recount in this way? 8. How do you think Evelyn’s understanding and awareness of sexuality were shaped by her relationship with Billy—the boy who works at the five-and-dime store? How does her sensibility evolve from this initial encounter? As she grows older, to what extent is Evelyn’s attitude toward sex is influenced by those around her? 9. On page 54, Evelyn uses the saying “all’s well that ends well” as part of her explanation for not regretting her actions. Do you think Evelyn truly believes this? Using examples from later in her life, discuss why or why not. How do you think this idea relates to the similar but more negatively associated phrase “the ends justify the means”?

But it's not your fault. You can't control what other people do. No, but I was responsible for my own actions. At some point we had abandoned responsibility and began fostering corruption in others so that we might shield ourselves from persecution by virtue of a common guilt. We did this in the name of profit, and we justified our crimes with the rationalization that, somewhere down the line, better people would safeguard our victims from us. I wasn't a looter or a moocher. I wasn't a producer either. None of us were. We certainly weren't capitalists. We were pillagers. Decency exists. That alone must make it important; even the great Darwin himself would say that. But we tried to cut decency out of others so as to lower the bar for ourselves. We are relative creatures. The man who teaches his slaves to read is a saint in a world where slavery is legal, and a monster where it isn't. We aren't born knowing if we're good or bad. We decide by comparing ourselves to others - and by that yardstick it's no different to measure by our own successes than our neighbors failures, save that it's easier to corrupt the neighbor.

The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the” “name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private “matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a

In physical terms, we know that every human action can be reduced to a series of impersonal events: Genes are transcribed, neurotransmitters bind to their receptors, muscle fibers contract, and John Doe pulls the trigger on his gun. But for our commonsense notions of human agency and morality to hold, it seems that our actions cannot be merely lawful products of our biology, our conditioning, or anything else that might lead others to predict them. Consequently, some scientists and philosophers hope that chance or quantum uncertainty can make room for free will. For instance, the biologist Martin Heisenberg has observed that certain processes in the brain, such as the opening and closing of ion channels and the release of synaptic vesicles, occur at random, and cannot therefore be determined by environmental stimuli. Thus, much of our behavior can be considered truly “self-generated”—and therein, he imagines, lies a basis for human freedom. But how do events of this kind justify the feeling of free will? “Self-generated” in this sense means only that certain events originate in the brain. If my decision to have a second cup of coffee this morning was due to a random release of neurotransmitters, how could the indeterminacy of the initiating event count as the free exercise of my will? Chance occurrences are by definition ones for which I can claim no responsibility. And if certain of my behaviors are truly the result of chance, they should be surprising even to me. How would neurological ambushes of this kind make me free? Imagine what your life would be like if all your actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires were randomly “self-generated” in this way. You would scarcely seem to have a mind at all. You would live as one blown about by an internal wind. Actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires can exist only in a system that is significantly constrained by patterns of behavior and the laws of stimulus-response. The possibility of reasoning with other human beings—or, indeed, of finding their behaviors and utterances comprehensible at all—depends on the assumption that their thoughts and actions will obediently ride the rails of a shared reality. This is true as well when attempting to understand one’s own behavior. In the limit, Heisenberg’s “self-generated” mental events would preclude the existence of any mind at all. The indeterminacy specific to quantum mechanics offers no foothold: If my brain is a quantum computer, the brain of a fly is likely to be a quantum computer, too. Do flies enjoy free will? Quantum effects are unlikely to be biologically salient in any case. They play a role in evolution because cosmic rays and other high-energy particles cause point mutations in DNA (and the behavior of such particles passing through the nucleus of a cell is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics). Evolution, therefore, seems unpredictable in principle.13 But few neuroscientists view the brain as a quantum computer. And even if it were, quantum indeterminacy does nothing to make the concept of free will scientifically intelligible. In the face of any real independence from prior events, every thought and action would seem to merit the statement “I don’t know what came over me.” If determinism is true, the future is set—and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behavior. And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism—quantum or otherwise—we can take no credit for what happens. There is no combination of these truths that seems compatible with the popular notion of free will.

Once you feel jealous, you will justify all your wrong actions, because it clouds your discrimination, it clouds your wisdom.

It only takes a single harrowing moment to realize that everyone is insane regardless of how sane they feel. That all decisions, reactions are justified by your individual madness. It is important to know it, this madness exists. I know it exists. I know how it impacts everything I do despite not knowing what reach my actions will have. Dust is just skin we have left behind and some people are more themselves than others.

In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work: We've agreed: the hierarchy, the Establishment, the arbiters, the socio- religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre - he fights for his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation - an accusation compounded of the shit- stained strictures of centuries of 'tradition'. This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.

Disconnect from mass media   When striving to become one of the new rich, it is imperative that you cut off or at least limit your connection to mass information for a time. Take a moment to define how much time you lose each day browsing the web, watching TV, engaging in social media outlets and all other activities requiring you to be plugged in. For the vast majority of us this will amount to hours each day, just imagine how much time you are losing over a week, a month and a year. You might claim you are gaining valuable information from doing these things, but the reality is that it is simply attempting to justify what is ultimately a time-wasting activity. No doubt some knowledge is gained but not enough to justify the amount of time and potential profit lost by doing so. Do keep in mind that when we tell you to cut out mass media it does not mean all media. Feel free to continue to actively engage in the ones that provide relevant information specific to your line of work. Entrepreneur articles, business magazines, and other similar resources can be well worth the time spent and can remain a part of your routine.   Avoid

The defense of necessity is considered a justification defense, as compared with an excuse defense such as duress. An action that is harmful but praiseworthy is justified, whereas an action that is harmful but ought to be forgiven may be excused. Rather than focusing on the actor’s state of mind, as would be done with an excuse defense, the court with a necessity defense focuses on the value of the act.

Seeing a problem clearly does not prevent you from taking action, he explained. Acceptance is not passivity. Sometimes we are justifiably displeased. What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, "respond" rather than simply "react." In the Buddhist view, you can't control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.

What level of aggressiveness do you use on an intoxicated patron at a bar that is staggering around and wanting to fight you? What level of aggressiveness do you use on a gang of thugs that have jumped you in a parking lot? I add these two extremes because you are more likely to face one of these examples than find yourself in a life-or-death struggle in a trench on the front lines of a battlefield. Do you understand the Force Continuum that is taught to Law Enforcement Officers? I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with it. Besides being an excellent mental tool to use when faced with potentially violent encounters, it could be invaluable if you ever have to justify your actions to law enforcement or before a judge. The techniques demonstrated in this book can be very serious when executed. You should have a solid understanding of the law, levels of force needed to mitigate a violent encounter, and most importantly, the moral and ethical foundation of a true warrior. A warrior that has a high level of self-confidence, but isn’t arrogant. One that trains their body and their mind for that moment that they might find themselves in a sudden violent encounter. Warriors understand when to hold back the level of their aggression, and likewise, they understand when to unleash it in all its ruthless darkness. Few in today’s society walk the true path of a warrior.

Suppose Public Enemy No.16, has just held you up at the point of a gun; taken your wallet with all your ten singles in it, and is stalking away, his back turned to you with the contempt criminals have for cowed citizens. Now is your chance (if you have recovered your senses). You take one or two soft steps toward him. Steal your right arm over his right shoulder, across his neck, around it; and grasp the collar of his coat on the left side, holding firmly. Ball your left hand into a hard fist and slam it into his left buttock. This will force his body forward and his head backward. The bony part of your right wrist jams it's way into his Adam's Apple. This is just the beginning of the action. You then drop to your left knee, bending your right leg to form a stumbling block. You continue. Vigorously you press the right arm and wrist across his throat and pull him backward. He falls over the right knee you have just prepared for him. Normally he would fall on his back. But you have prepared a worse fate for him. As he falls he naturally stretches out his arms to balance himself. You seize his left arm with your left hand and bend it in such a way that his body is turned over—onto his face. You then disengage your right arm from under his throat, but only far enough to grasp his chin and twist it upward and away from the ground. To keep him passive in this punishing position, you lower your right knee to press into the small of his back. While further to imprison him, you grasp his right arm with your right and stretch it upward. (See Fig. 21) This is the most devastating and utterly demoralizing hold imaginable. If you study it carefully and learn to co-ordinate all the movements with speed and precision, you will most likely, by means of this one trick alone, justify all the energy and effort you have given to Jiu-jitsu. It will establish you at once as an athlete of no mean parts. You will be the terror of your enemies and the joy of your friends.

When you sit, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action. For the time being, at least, you are just watching them. Looking at them, you quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away, that they have a life of their own, that they are not you but just thinking, and that you do not have to be ruled by them. Not feeding or reacting to impulses, you come to understand their nature as thoughts directly. This process actually burns up destructive impulses in the fires of concentration and equanimity and non-doing. At the same time, creative insights and creative impulses are no longer squeezed out so much by the more turbulent, destructive ones. They are nourished as they are perceived and held in awareness. Mindfulness can thereby refashion the links in the chain of actions and consequences, and in doing so it unchains us, frees us, and opens up new directions for us through the moments we call life. Without mindfulness, we are all too easily stuck in the momentum coming out of the past, with no clue to our own imprisonment, and no way out. Our dilemma always seems to be the other person’s fault, or the world’s fault, so our own views and feelings are always justified. The present moment is never a new beginning because we keep it from becoming one.

If you've convinced yourself that a market correction is likely (your belief) to justify holding cash rather than investing (your action), you may be under the influence of cognitive dissonance.

What level of aggressiveness do you use on an intoxicated patron at a bar that is staggering around and wanting to fight you? What level of aggressiveness do you use on a gang of thugs that have jumped you in a parking lot? I add these two extremes because you are more likely to face one of these examples than find yourself in a life-or-death struggle in a trench on the front lines of a battlefield. Do you understand the Force Continuum that is taught to Law Enforcement Officers? I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with it. Besides being an excellent mental tool to use when faced with potentially violent encounters, it could be invaluable if you ever have to justify your actions to law enforcement or before a judge. The techniques demonstrated in this book can be very serious when executed. You should have a solid understanding of the law, levels of force needed to mitigate a violent encounter, and most importantly, the moral and ethical foundation of a true warrior. A warrior that has a high level of self-confidence, but isn’t arrogant. One that trains their body and their mind for that moment that they might find themselves in a sudden violent encounter. Warriors understand when to hold back the level of their aggression, and likewise, they understand when to unleash it in all its ruthless darkness. Few in today’s society walk the true path of a warrior. Most modern warriors are in special operations in the military and within the intelligence community. Others work as overseas contractors. There are some that work in various government agencies, but on the most part average civilians will never be in the role of a true warrior. Can any of us still be thrust into a life-or-death encounter with only our four limbs and, most importantly, our head to survive the situation? Yes, but honestly the odds of being in that kind of situation are extremely low. Given the gravity of such a situation, we should all still train ourselves to be able to increase our chance of surviving. The segment of the population that doesn’t train and believes that this type of thing will never happen to them, or their loved ones, falls under the category of those to be protected. Then again, you, as an individual, have the right to turn a blind eye, though morally and ethically wrong to a warrior, in such a situation and let natural selection take its course. I couldn’t do that and I’m sure the vast majority of you feel the same way. By examining ourselves and determining that we would not stand by idly while others were attacked, adds additional responsibility and purpose.

We analyzed the ten tech companies worth over a billion dollars that went public in 2014 and 2015, and the average company spent a jaw-dropping $0.72 on sales and marketing for every $1.00 of sales during the three-year hypergrowth period before going public. As a matter of fact, one of the companies, Box, spent $1.59 for every $1.00 in sales! You’re probably wondering, how does a company like Box justify spending more money on sales and marketing than they generate in sales? The answer is “customer lifetime value.” Once Box mathematically proved that they could acquire a customer for less than the lifetime value (LTV) of that customer, they raised a war chest of investment capital and didn’t care if they spent more on sales and marketing than they generated in annual sales, because they knew that they would generate a big return in the long run. You probably don’t have access to a massive war chest of investment capital, but that doesn’t mean you are unable to invest more resources on growth. Instead of benchmarking your growth investment against customer lifetime value, benchmark against your bottom-line profits. Here is a list of financial scenarios and corresponding actions: If you desire growth and have a profitable business, operate at a break-even point and reinvest the profit, or a portion of the profit, back into growth. If you are running a break-even or unprofitable business, spend some time going through your expenditures looking for redundancies or unnecessary expenses. If you cannot find any opportunities to save money, prepare yourself to take a temporary pay cut (you can time this around your tax refund or right after your busy period if your business has seasonality). If you are unable to take a temporary pay cut, prepare yourself to work some extra hours (start by batching activities so you can spend a day per week working from home, and use the time you save when not having a work commute to invest in growth). If you are unable to take a temporary pay cut AND unable to work any extra hours, then read the paragraph below.

Each moment or decision stands on its own and you don’t get to “carry over” credit from past behavior. If you notice that you’re using past actions to justify counterproductive actions in the present (“I was so good yesterday I can take a break today”), stop immediately and don’t undercut your own progress

Feeling sorry for yourself can buy time. Instead of taking action or moving forward, exaggerating how bad your situation is justifies why you shouldn’t do anything to improve it.

Some things are not said or done for a reason. Even you justify doing them or saying them because it suits your narrative. The repercussions of doing those things or saying them it is still the same. We think we have bad luck only to find out. It is the consequence of our actions. We make bad decisions and do bad things. Choose to do right all the time or every time you get a chance.

One of the most pervasive bits of folk psychology is the belief that self-control is limited—that, by the nature of our temperament, we only have so much willpower available to us. Furthermore, the thinking goes, we are liable to run out of willpower when we exert ourselves. Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: ego depletion. Not so long ago, my after-work routine looked like this: I’d sit on the couch and veg out for hours, keeping company with Netflix and a cold pint of ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, to be exact). I knew the ice cream and the sitting weren’t good for me, but I justified my actions by telling myself I was “spent,” acting as if my ego were depleted (even if I’d never heard the term).

The First Swing, slicing through the air with effortless aplomb. The moment you take your first swing you wield your axe like you are a master in the art of gleaning. Those before you are in awe. They cannot imagine what your next move will be. You carry yourself as balanced and poised as a performer dancing brutally among them. The searing star of stars, your robe cascading to the earth in showers of gold. But that is not the truth. Your worth does not matter to those who now matter to you. You are truly nothing but a tiny sunspot to the eyes of others like yourself. An insignificant fleck. And as you take that first swing, they laugh at you. You try to rise above their derision, to be noticed in some small way. To find favor from the old ones, who are never old. To gain respect from the young ones, who have slain their own youth. To justify the arrogance that comes with the pride of being chosen. But that is not the truth either. It will be years until you come to know the truth: That those you revere are merely servants to the collective that we prune. It was their choice to let us choose all those years ago. The awed, terrified, relieved spectators; the real ones in power, the puppeteers of your actions. Standing in a perfect line before them, a cutting edge, wielding our axes, each one of us is the same as the last. We are one in all, We are all in one, and We. Shall. Kill. Our mantra, our commandment, our duty, to remind the immortal of mortality. To teach them that eternal repose may be distant, but not lost. Who are We? We are Scythes. And the weapons we wield are not by any means our friends. The devastating force of bullet, blade, and bludgeon tears us apart each day, every day, piece by piece, and leaves us with wounds that will never heal. This is what ties us to the masses, yet restrains us from being one with them. And with each new gleaning we bleed and break anew, yet our resolve never changes. For We are Scythes. Nothing will ever change that. And when it is your time to bleed, you will know and you will learn.

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.” “No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

Well, where does that leave us with regard to social action and practice? The answer is very far away. There still remains an enormous gap between what we have to grasp in order to ground moral action, to choose a course of action on moral grounds. An enormous gap between that and what we, in fact, understand about human nature and the human needs that derive from it, and the human rights that derive from it. Big gap. So, we are left where we were, with the need to make an intuitive leap and to posit some judgment about what real, intrinsic human nature is. In a sense, you're staking your faith in what you think or hope human beings may be. Now, if you take as your faith that of, say, the classical liberal doctrine, you will conclude that there is no justification, there's no moral justification for the commissar, the central committee, or the cultural or corporate manager, or any of the others who control and coerce us on species grounds. The actual classical liberal view, which is very different from what is known with its deep innatist roots, is very subversive and radical because it challenges the existence of any form of authority and requires that it be justified, which can rarely be done. It's not too surprising, I think, that the actual ideas of the Enlightenment have been subjected to such a broad-ranging attack. They are radical and subversive because of the faith that they express in human capacity, and human rights, and human needs, and their richness. And that's a deeply upsetting view from the point of view of any institutional structure which is concerned with control and manipulation, or any of the people who operate within those institutional structures. Well, if one takes this position, the next thing to do is to make the intuitive leap and turn to the concrete substantive questions of acting as a moral agent, choosing a course of action. And here what you do is seek out structures of authority and domination. Often we don't see them, so you have to try to find them even though they're there. Once you notice them, you see them and seek them out. Ask the question as to whether they, in fact, are legitimate for some contingent reason, say, self-defense or whatever argument is put forth. And if they fail that test, as they almost invariably do, to move forward to dismantle them, which means solidarity, organization, and so on. That's a hard task. But there are achievements. There are real achievements. For most of human history, for example, literal human slavery was considered legitimate. In fact, considered quite praiseworthy. It was for the benefit of these depraved creatures who shouldn't be left on their own. It's only a little tiny period of human history where this is considered a total obscenity. And the fact that it is considered a total obscenity is an achievement. In the 18th century, it was pointed out that wage slavery is fundamentally not very different from slavery. If people are compelled to rent themselves in order to survive, it's not very different than selling yourself in order to survive. That's an insight that has yet to be recovered, but it's a valid one. And, in fact, notice that it grows from these same conceptions of human nature. But, at least, literal human slavery would no longer be justified by, I suppose, almost anyone. That's an achievement. It's a moral achievement. It's a moral advance. Just in our own lifetimes, the questions of the legitimacy of sexist oppression have come to the fore. It's not like anybody noticed before, but there's been a sustained and committed effort to bring them to consciousness. And it's not long ago, anybody my age will know, that it's not long ago they just didn't see it, notice it. It was just part of the background. Now, at least you see it. The problems are there, but it's a moral advance that the problems are recognized to be there. There's some effort to come to terms with them.

They tell you that you aren’t remembering something right or that you’re plain out wrong when you know you are right. ○     They make you feel that your thoughts and feelings don’t matter to anyone else, either. ○     They withhold information, then act like they don’t know what you’re talking about. ○ They give you the silent treatment. ○     They make you doubt your own thoughts by questioning the validity of them. ○     They justify their actions because it’s for your own good. ○ They deny something ever happened.

If they doubt your actions, justify them. If they doubt your intentions, let them continue doubting you.

How we can appropriately enjoy good food, fine clothes and cheerful company as these come our way in the natural course of things. You should not worry yourself about food or clothing, feeling that these things are too good for you, but train your mind and the ground of your being to be above them. Nothing should rouse your mind to love and delight but God alone. It should be above all other things. Why? It would be a sickly form of inwardness which needed to be put right by external clothing; rather, as long as it is under your control, what is inside should correct what is outside. And if the latter comes to you in a different form, then you should accept it as being good from the ground of your being, but in such a way that you would accept it just as willingly if it were different again. It is just the same with the food, the friends and relatives and with everything that God may give you or take from you. And so in my view the most important thing of all is that we should give ourselves up entirely to God whenever he allows anything to befall us, whether insult, tribulation or any other kind of suffering, accepting it with joy and gratitude and allowing God to guide us all the more rather than seeking these things out ourselves. Willingly learn all things from God therefore and follow him, and all will be well with you. Then we will be able to accept honour and comfort, and if dishonour and discomfort were to be our lot, we could and would be just as willing to endure these too. So they can justifiably feast who would just as willingly fast.15 And that must also be the reason why God relieves his friends of both major and minor suffering, which otherwise his infinite faithfulness could not allow him to do, for there is so much and such great benefit in suffering and he neither wishes nor ought to deny his own anything which is good. But he is content with a good and upright will, or else he would spare them no suffering on account of the inexpressible benefit which it contains. As long as God is content, you too should be content, and when it is something else in you which pleases him, then you should still be content. For we should be so totally God’s possession inwardly with the whole of our will that we should not be unduly concerned about either devotional practices or works. And in particular you should avoid all particularity, whether in the form of clothes, food or words – as in making grand speeches, or particularity of gesture, since these things serve no useful purpose at all. But you should also know that not every form of particularity is forbidden to you. There is much that is particular which we must sometimes do and with many people, for whoever is a particular person must also express particularity on many occasions and in many ways. We should have grown into our Lord Jesus Christ inwardly and in all things so that all his works are reflected in us together with his divine image. We should bear in ourselves all his works in a perfect likeness as far as we can. Though we are the agents of our actions, it is he who should take form in them. So act out of the whole of your devotion and your intent, training your mind in this at all times and teaching yourself to grow into him in all that you do.

At the moment, most of our ways of defining the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details. So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them. And everybody who is involved in the killing, says that he has God on his side. There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others.’ ‘And you’re putting the physics of the universe up as a kind of platinum-iridium bar?

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Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you both or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior. This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.

That's real gosh-darn unfortunate, because if you need to 'justify your actions' before dropping the hammer every time you've got some jerk in your sights, I might as well spare you the trouble of going on this little crusade of yours and blow your kidneys all over the desert right here and now. Killing isn't about weighing the morality of every trigger pull, it's about putting people who deserve to die in the ground so the people who don't deserve death can go on living their benign, meaningless lives a little while longer. That's it. Do you think you can shoot Pauly Paggiano in the face for what he did, but you can't go down and cap the filth brewing up poison going to some single mother in need of a fix? Well, what makes you think you can shoot Paggiano's bodyguard, who never did anything to you? I mean, he just works for the family, right? Once you start letting that nonsense corrode the wiring between your brain and your trigger finger, you might as well put one in your own brainpan, because you're done.

Tactical decision games are situational exercises on paper representing a snap shot in time. A scenario is handed out that describes a problem related to your profession (law enforcement, security, military, business, etc). The facilitator sets a short time limit for you to come up with a solution to the problem presented. The TDGs can be conducted individually or in a group setting. As soon as time is up, with the facilitator using “time hacks”, an individual or group is told to present their course of action to the rest of the group. What you did and why? Justifying your actions to everyone else! It is important that individuals or groups working together are candid and honest in their responses. You’re only fooling yourself to do otherwise. The lesson learned from the TDGs can make you more effective and safe in the performance of your job. The time to develop the strength of character and the courage to make decisions comes here, in the training environment. Mistakes can be made here that do not cost a life and valuable lessons are learned.

I've seen way too many people lean on the wrong people in their recovery, and relapse. It's very sad to see it happen. It's just a sign they are not ready for sobriety. When you justify your actions to those who want the best for you, the only one you fool is yourself. If you have slipped, I just waI've seen way too many people lean on the wrong people in their recovery, and relapse. It's very sad to see it happen. It's just a sign they are not ready for sobriety. When you justify your actions to those who want the best for you, the only one you fool is yourself. If you have slipped, I just want to encourage you to get back on track before it's too late! Ask for help, don't isolate, don't make excuses, take action now! I pray you find your way back out of the darkness!nt to encourage you to get back on track before it's too late! Ask for help, don't isolate, don't make excuses, take action now! I pray you find your way back out of the darkness!

If you are uncertain or in confusion don't take any decisions. If you feel you can do something just feel it and do it. you cannot justify your actions that you do for others when you are unstable. People will feel for something all the time and you cannot make them happy anyway...

2. As soon as you become too interested in worldly pleasure and ease, your conscience objects. You are your own worst enemy when you act against your conscience. The wrong which you do becomes worse when you try to excuse yourself or justify your actions. 3.

moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.