Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.
Friedrich Engels

Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions.
Gustav Heinemann

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
Louis D. Brandeis

Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment.
Arne Jacobsen

Gentlemen, I fervently trust that before long the principle of arbitration may win such confidence as to justify its extension to a wider field of international differences.
Henry Campbell-Bannerman

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
Ted Koppel

How could you justify giving Holland twice the amount of money that you gave Belgium? Well, finally, I put it up to them. They said that they couldn't do it; it would destroy them. I said they had to do it. And I finally got support from Hoffman on it.
W. Averell Harriman

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.
Richard Attenborough

I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.
Jonathan Dimbleby

I feel like I'm always having to justify why I haven't kept in touch with anyone from the old days in Stoke-on-Trent, but I'm like that with anybody. I don't let anybody in. I just rely on myself.
Robbie Williams

I felt strongly that since the pursuit of good science was so difficult it was essential that the problem being studied was an important one to justify the effort expanded.
Paul Nurse

I had given up magic, because it had reached a state of perfection. I felt that I was able to transform men into animals. I did not make use of this capability, because I believed I could not justify an intervention of this kind in the life of another person.
Wolfgang Hildesheimer

I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you.
Uma Thurman

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.
Rem Koolhaas

I think people could justify labeling me if they saw a pattern in what I do, but right now that's impossible.
Skeet Ulrich

I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.
Jimmy Carter

I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.
Neil Sheehan

I'm 20 years old. I like to party as much as anyone my age. Going clubbing is my way of relaxing or releasing a lot of stress. I don't feel that I should have to justify that part of my life. I don't know that I'm necessarily an addict.
Lindsay Lohan

I'm not a Hollywood basher because enough good movies come out of the Hollywood system every year to justify its existence, without any apologies.
Quentin Tarantino

If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.
Russ Feingold