Laurence Sterne Quotes

If this trade --- slavery --- admits of a moral or a rational justification, every crime, even the most atrocious, may be justified.

Humanity never met a dictator or demagogue who said, “I’m a bad person. I want to do bad things.” The worst among us always feel justified.

Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.

Of course you are. The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren't," I say. "And then we were very disposable - right, Plutarch?

It's hard to convince people that you're killing them for their own good.

Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

It is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods. It occurs to me to ask: How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of Capital in the last five hundred years?

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

The cost of growth is always a small act of violence.

...war is just to those for whom it is necessary, and arms are clear of impiety for those who have no hope left but in arms.

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them..'If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying- pan, you can take a walk into the fire.

But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’ Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.

Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? - Through whose blood am I to wade ?

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone "reaping" than "killing"-and when one knows that death isn't the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it.

Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.

We have a lot of villains in the world, all right? And the Catholic doctrine says turn the other cheek, the Christian doctrine. But if you turn the other cheek, you could be annihilated. So when is it justifiable to defend yourself and take aggressive action in that regard, like dropping drones on people?

I used to think that cruelty required malice, but that is not true. Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice. But she is cruel because she doesn't care what she does, as long as it fascinates her. I may as well be a puzzle or a broken machine she wants to fix. She will break open my skull just to see the inner workings of my brain; I will die here, and that will be the merciful thing.

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?

It was wrong. But it was worth it.

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

Structures can be manipulated for ill as well, especially when people are dealing with issues of power, or control, or violence.