Justify

Famous quotes containing the word justify:

    The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    We find that even the parents who justify spanking to themselves are defensive and embarrassed about it....I suspect that deep in the memory of every parent are the feelings that had attended his own childhood spankings, the feelings of humiliation, of helplessness, of submission through fear. The parent who finds himself spanking his own child cannot dispel the ghosts of his own childhood.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    America is the world’s living myth. There’s no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We’re here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing.
    Don Delillo (b. 1926)