Self-Justification Quotes

When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.

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. Greatness appeals to the future.

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes them strive to justify themselves. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses resentment.

I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction.

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.

Making matters worse is people's natural inclination to be easy on themselves, judging themselves according to their good intentions-while holding others to a higher standard and judging them by their worst actions.

No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices they would call "hard but necessary" for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It's very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.

What people don't understand is that it wasn't about Dean or Eddie, it was about whether or not I was in the right place.

Don’t give explanations to those who haven’t asked for them. And although they are asked for, it is folly to give them too eagerly. To offer excuses before they are called for is to incriminate yourself, and to bleed yourself when you are healthy is to attract malady and malice. Excusing yourself before hand awakens suspicions that were fast asleep. The prudent person should never blink before the suspicion of others: that would be looking for offense. He should try to dissimulate with a firm, righteous manner.

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

It is human nature to hate the man whom you have hurt.

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace — not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our own failures.

I know I've done bad things. But I've done just as much good as I have done bad. And it's not even necessarily bad. I would say they're growing pains.

The more bad choices you make, the less bad your choices seem.

I've done no harm to no one. In fact, I think I've improved the world.

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.

Too liberal self-accusations are generally but so many traps for acquittal with applause.

Less shame a greater fault would palliate.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.