14 Quotes Tagged: excuse

We have no idea any more what it means to feel guilty. The communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them, murdurers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out and say: there is no excuse. No one could be more innocent in his soul and conscience than Oedipus, and yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done.

Advice is what we ask for when we already knew the answer but wish we didn't.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant

Make improvements, not excuses. Seek respect, not attention.

A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.'
(Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.)

[Diary entry, February 13 1756]

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it — to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.

The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.

Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.

Don't bother explaining — I've heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true.

Was the whole matter of aptitudes a myth – a copout used by people like me to avoid subjects that would force us to think in
Therefore threatening ways?

Do Not Lie to Yourself

We have to be honest about what we want and take risks rather than lie to ourselves and make excuses to stay in our comfort zone.