Judgments Quotes

Anything allowed in the heart which is contrary to the will of God, let it seem ever so insignificant, or be ever so deeply hidden, will cause us to fall before our enemies. Any root of bitterness cherished towards another, any self-seeking, any harsh judgments indulged in, any slackness in obeying the voice of the Lord, any doubtful habits or surroundings, any one of these things will effectually cripple and paralyze our spiritual life. I believe our blessed Guide, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is always secretly discovering these things to us by continual little twinges and pangs of conscience, so that we are left without excuse. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

In general, I think man-on-the- street ads and endorsement spots are having less and less effect on people. The electorate's getting very sophisticated, and they want to make their own judgments. ~ Roger Ailes

It is better not to call anything to anybody - just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you - no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness. This watchfulness, I call meditation. ~ Rajneesh

To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause; or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love. ~ William Hazlitt

You will not dishonor the divine perfections by judgments unworthy of them, provided you never judge of Him by yourself, provided you do not ascribe to the Creator the imperfections and limitations of created beings. ~ Nicolas Malebranche

Judging a book by its cover was standard practice in human relations. ~ Kenneth Eade

Women collect grievances, hold grudges and change shape. They pass hard, legitimate judgments, unlike the purblind guesses of men, fogged with romanticism and ignorance and bias and wish. Women know too much, they can neither be deceived nor trusted. I can understand why men are afraid of them, as they are frequently accused of being. ~ Margaret Atwood

I think that unless you can take judgments of right and wrong like an automaton, you must have emotions because that is our only way of moral guidance. ~ Joanna Lumley

Actors, it's very hard for them to make value judgments when they play characters. It's very dangerous if you start thinking of yourself as a bad guy. ~ Stacy Keach

While the powers of the Primal Cause lie in causation, it shows itself in process through thoughts, perception and conception. It is the power of the Primal Cause to decipher what is perceived from the ordered plane and conceive judgments through thoughts from the unordered. ~ Dew Platt

Communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

They will set aside what they have believed about the world, divesting themselves of all preconceptions, all judgments ... They will do it, then they will send their minds out to seek the truth. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

Hal wills himself to stay objective and not form any judgments before he has serious data, hoping desperately for some sort of hopeful feeling to emerge. ~ David Foster Wallace

All moralistic judgments, whether positive or negative, are tragic expressions of unmet needs. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Studies show that girls - especially smarter ones - have severe problems in the area of self-confidence.
They consistently underestimate their own ability. When asked how they think they'll do on different tasks - whether the tasks are untried or ones they've encountered before - they give lower estimates than boys do, and in general underestimate their actual performance as well. One study even showed that the brighter the girl, the less expectations she has of being successful at intellectual tasks. (...)
Low self-confidence is the plague of many girls, and it leads to a host of related problems. Girls are highly suggestible and tend to change their minds about perceptual judgments if someone disagrees with them. They set lower standards for themselves. While boys are challenged by difficult tasks, girls try to avoid them. (...) Given her felt incompetence, it's not surprising that the little girl would hotfoot it to the nearest Other and cling for dear life. (...) As we can see, the problems of excessive dependence follow female children right into adulthood. ~ Colette Dowling

I never wanted to live in that place again, but if for some reason I was forced to live there again, I would never accept the harsh judgments made against me by people whose only power to do so was that they had known me from the moment I was born. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. ~ Daniel Kahneman

It isn't events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them. ~ Epictetus

A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power. ~ John Adams

Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way. ~ David Gergen

All Hellenistic schools seem to define [wisdom] in approximately the same terms: first and foremost, as a state of perfect peace of mind. From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the Skeptics, by false opinions. Whether or not they laid claim to the Socratic heritage, all Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Evil is to be found not within things, but in the value judgments with people bring to bear upon things. People can therefore be cured of their ills only if they are persuaded to change their value judgments, and in this sense all these philosophies wanted to be therapeutic. ~ Pierre Hadot

I haven't been in the Louvre for twenty years. It doesn't interest me because I have these doubts about the value of the judgments which decided that all these pictures should be presented to the Louvre instead of others which weren't even considered. ~ Marcel Duchamp

Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth - and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound. ~ Thomas Wolfe

A final caution to students: in making judgments on literature, always be honest. Do not pretend to like what you really do not like. Do not be afraid to admit a liking for what you do like. A genuine enthusiasm for the second-rate is much better than false enthusiasm or no enthusiasm at all. Be neither hasty nor timorous in making your judgments. When you have attentively read a poem and thoroughly considered it, decide what you think. Do not hedge, equivocate, or try to find out others' opinions before forming your own. But having formed an opinion and expressed it, do not allow it to petrify. Compare your opinion then with the opinions of others; allow yourself to change it when convinced of its error: in this way you learn. Honestly, courage, and humility are the necessary moral foundations for all genuine literary judgment. ~ Laurence Perrine

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.

But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

You see, the one who wills for judgment is man, not God. The heart of God wills for salvation. Greater than His judgments are His compassions. ~ Jonathan Cahn

Awakening involves mind training. Step back and pay attention to the thoughts that come into awareness. Feel your desire for healing. Preferences are judgments, and as the mind yields to the nonjudgmental Perspective of the Holy Spirit, the Awakening is obvious. Observe that as long as appetites seem to exist there are the ego defenses of indulgence and repression. Neither is better or worse than the other, for they are the same illusion. The miracle offers a real alternative and when one is consistently miracle-minded, defenses are no longer needed. ~ David Hoffmeister

You're right: if there's sentient life behind the border, it probably won't share my goals. Unlike the people in this room, who all want exactly the same things in life as I do, and have precisely the same tastes in food, art, music, and sex. Unlike the people of Schur, and Cartan, and Zapata - who I came here in the hope of protecting, after losing my own home - who doubtless celebrate all the same festivals, delight in the same songs and stories, and gather every fortieth night to watch actors perform the same plays, in the same language, from the same undisputed canon, as the people I left behind.

"If there's sentient life behind the border, of course we couldn't empathize with it. These creatures are unlikely to possess cute mammalian neonate faces, or anything else we might mistake for human features. None of us could have the imagination to get over such insurmountable barriers, or the wit to apply such difficult abstractions as the General Intelligence theorem - though since every twelve-year-old on my home world was required to master that result, it must be universally known on this side of the border.

"You're right: we should give up responsibility for making any difficult moral judgments, and surrender to the dictates of natural selection. Evolution cares so much about our happiness that no one who's obeyed an inherited urge has ever suffered a moment's regret for it. History is full of joyful case studies of people who followed their na ~ Greg Egan

The question is whether distinct cognitive structures can be identified, which interact in the real use of language and linguistic judgments, the grammatical system being one of these. Certainly, ~ Noam Chomsky

The most important thing about a TV set is to get it back against something and not out in the middle of a room where it's like a somber fellow making electronic judgments on you. ~ Bruce Jay Friedman

Please know that I never make any judgments about who's going to heaven and hell. That's the Almighty's job. My job is to love Him, love you, share the Good News, and then move on down the road. ~ Phil Robertson

Theism, however, teaches that not only is there a moral universe but there is an absolute standard by which all moral judgments are measured. God himself-his character of goodness (holiness and love)-is the standard. ~ James W. Sire

When you allow circumstances beyond your control to determine your attitude and actions, you risk plunging into a downward spiral of hasty decisions and faulty judgments, to overreacting, giving up too soon, and missing those opportunities that always - always - appear just when you think life will never get better. ~ Nick Vujicic

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes. ~ Karl Friedrich Bahrdt

Of course it does. I can't make judgments using other people's ideas!" "There's the sticking point! You're forgetting that other people have their own ideas about good and evil, ideas that might be better than yours . . ." "If everyone thought like you, we would never get anywhere. We need rules, we need laws! ~ Jose Saramago

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. ~ Albert Einstein

There is a marvelous ambiguity to the ego: on the one hand it is an ordinary part of the world, one of many things that inhabit it. It occupies space, endures through time, has physical and psychic features, and interacts causally with other things in the world: if it falls, it falls like any other body; if it is pushed, it topples over like any other thing; if treated with chemicals, it reacts like any living organism; if light rays hit its visual organs, it reacts electronically, chemically, and psychologically. 'I' am a material, organic, and psychological thing. If we were to take the self simply as one of the things in the world, we would be treating it as what can be called the empirical ego.

On the other hand, this very same self can also be played off against the world: it is the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves. It is the agent of truth, the one responsible for judgments and verifications, the perceptual and cognitive 'owner' of the world. When considered in this manner, it is no longer simply a part of the world; it is what is called the transcendental ego.

The empirical and transcendental egos are not two entities; they are one and the same being, but considered in two ways. ~ Robert Sokolowski

I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior. ~ Nikolas Schreck

It is evident that it is the belief of Christian people in this country and in all other enlightened portions of the world that as a nation, we have passed through a severe ordeal - that severe judgments have been poured out upon us on account of the manner in which a poor, oppressed race was treated in this country. ~ Hiram Rhodes Revels

Correct Overestimated Feedback Fears

One of the reasons anxious people fear feedback is that they tend to judge their performance more harshly than others judge them. If you're feeling anxious, you'll probably overestimate the likelihood that any feedback you'll get will be negative - the negative predictions thinking error.
Let's say you need to get feedback on your delivery of an upcoming presentation. You fear that you'll get crucified, that people will say your presentation style is horrible and won't say anything nice. How likely does this feared outcome feel? You might say, "It feels 99% likely." How likely is it in reality? You think, "Objectively, maybe 50%?" Your answer of 50% may still be an overestimate, but at least it jump-starts the shift in your thinking. It alters you that your anxious feelings are, to some extent, clouding your perceptions.
Although it seems strange that people can shift their thinking just based on whether they are asked to think with their anxious mind or their objective mind, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. There's lots of research evidence that people's thinking changes based on how they're asked to think about something. For example, my own doctoral research asked people in relationships how their judgments of their romantic partner compared to reality. People recognized that they tended to view their partners more positively than warranted by reality.
Experiment: Think of a current area in your life wh ~ Alice Boyes

It's evident to anyone paying attention that zero tolerance equals 100 percent stupidity. But you have to understand that zero-tolerance rules aren't about protecting kids. They exist to protect the adults who are too cowardly to make judgments. ~ Jonathan V. Last

The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted ~ G.K. Chesterton

The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting - or "crowding out," as the economists say - our moral judgments. Rulers are adding moral judgments to the expanding schedule of powers they exercise. Nor does the state deal merely with principles. It is actually telling its subjects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by "freedom," and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy? ~ Kenneth Minogue

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness . ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don't mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate. You can't leave behind your skin color, or your height, or the handsomeness or homeliness of your face. But you can leave your story behind. If you've broken hearts, the new place doesn't know. If you've lost trust in people and yourself, the new place doesn't know. If everyone thinks you love Jesus, but you never really have figured out what you believe, the new place doesn't care. It may assume you have it all tied nicely in a bow. All your thoughts and histories. Just feeling like your past isn't a vice to hold you in place can be very freeing. Feeling like your family and the expectations and the traditions and the judgments are absent... it can fill your veins with possibility and fire. ~ Jedidiah Jenkins

I have a traditional view of the afterlife ... heaven, hell and judgments. But the accounts of those places are scant, and I believe it's on purpose. We aren't supposed to try to figure out the architecture of the afterlife, since the big game is here in this life. ~ Doug TenNapel

And even now we labor in our residual gloom, until in your only Son we become your righteousness; for that righteousness is like God's high and holy mountains, while your judgments, which were all the being we then had, are like the deep. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Snap judgments? I'd gotten over those about the time I was toilet trained. Swore off diapers and faith in the human experience all in one week. ~ Rob Thurman

Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty
self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken
by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they
considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others
who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided
themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their
righteous judgments. ~ Radclyffe Hall

We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves. ~ Pauline Kael

You should never form judgments from front page headlines. As with a contract, the fine print on the inside pages should be carefully studied. ~ Harry S. Truman

One of the hallmarks of our tendency to sin is that we feel the need to criticize, we take pleasure in gossiping, and we feel qualified to make judgments, often with very little information. ~ Adam Hamilton

Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver. ~ Robert Murray M'Cheyne

Revive me, O LORD, according to Your word. 108Accept, I pray, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O LORD, And teach me Your judgments. 109My life is continually in my hand, Yet I do not forget Your law. 110The wicked have laid a snare for me, Yet I have not strayed from Your precepts. 111Your testimonies I have taken as a heritage forever, For they are the rejoicing of my heart. 112I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes Forever, to the very end. ~ Anonymous

How I perceive others is a direct reflection of the judgments that I have placed over my own life. ~ E'yen A. Gardner

There is nothing inherently metaphoric about such claims of basic experiential morality as "Health is good," "It is better to be cared for than uncared for," "Everyone ought to be protected from physical harm," and "It is good to be loved."
However, as soon as we develop such claims into a full-fledged human morality, we find that virtually all of our abstract moral concepts-justice, rights, empathy, nurturance, strength, uprightness, and so forth-are defined by metaphors. That is why there is no ethical system that is not metaphorical. We understand our experience via these conceptual metaphors, we reason according to their metaphorical logic, and we make judgments on the basis of the metaphors. This is what we mean when we say that morality is metaphoric. ~ George Lakoff

Between childhood, boyhood, adolescence and manhood (maturity) there should be sharp lines drawn with tests, deaths, feats, rites, stories, songs, and judgments. ~ Jim Morrison

all the many times I assign thoughts to others that they never actually think. I hold them accountable to harsh judgments they never make. And I own a rejection from them they never gave me. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

It is the peculiar privilege of the Church, to know what the Divine judgments mean, and what is their tendency. ~ John Calvin

Growth has become addictive. Like heroin addiction, the habit distorts basic value judgments. Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfactions. They have become tolerant to
escalating marginal disutility. They are blind to deeper frustration because they are absorbed in playing for always mounting stakes. ~ Ivan Illich

The opacity of the mind, its inability to project itself into the realm of another's personality, goes a long way to explain the friction of life. If we would set down other people's errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the justice of our judgments ... we are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him ... nothing will probe to the core of this greatest disadvantage under which we labor
that is, mutual noncomprehension
except a basis of society and government which would make it easy for each to put himself in another's place because his place is so much like another's ... we [would] need less imagination in order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us. ~ Frances E. Willard

Good writing tends to present evidence rather than judgments. When the evidence is well presented, the reader's judgments will agree with those implicit in the writing. But nothing is more disastrous to the communication between writer and reader than a series of implicit judgments with which the reader cannot agree or which he finds to be simply silly or for which he is given no evidence he can respect. ~ John Ciardi

Writers should be able to fully deduct from their taxes all writing-related expenses, including alcohol, parking tickets, court judgments, fines for lewd public behavior, Zoloft, and cigarettes. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The more people trust in God, the less will they trust their own judgments, or interfere with the ordering of events. ~ George MacDonald

Unconditional love is a gift of the heart. It's a gift that we can both give and receive that comes with no strings attached, no qualifications, reservations, footnotes, asterisks, objections, judgments, or other kinds of fine print legalese that later have to be uncovered, argued over, or cried about. ~ Catherine Carrigan

We don't have to believe the story of our lives we've been told. You're not the same person you were when you first had sex and not the same as you'll be five years down the line. All redefining yourself requires is the bravery to be fearless, and let go of the judgments. ~ Laura Berman

It is all too easy to draw conclusions and make sweeping judgments about millions of Muslim women based on fleeting television images. That is not right. ~ Queen Rania Of Jordan

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves. ~ Charles Spurgeon

The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the soul, curing it of improper emotions, false beliefs, and faulty judgments, which are the causes of so much hardship and handicap. To heal the body one turns to the practitioner of the art of healing the body, but to heal the soul there is no doctor to turn to, and each of us is left to become that doctor unto himself. Yet, this need not stop us from exhorting others to imitate us in the godly art, in the forlorn hope that they might transform themselves into better citizens for Athens and better companions for us. ~ Neel Burton

Our present tax system ... exerts too heavy a drag on growth ... It reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking ... The present tax load ... distorts economic judgments and channels an undue amount of energy into efforts to avoidtaxliabilities. ~ John F. Kennedy

I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light. ~ Jack Kerouac

I think of myself as a political idiot. Idiot, in ancient Greece, denoted a common person without access to knowledge and information--all women, by definition, and most men. I am unable to make judgments. I see no options I can identify with. Is that normal? ~ Jasmina Tesanovic

Most people have this tendency to make judgments on others based on preconceptions, especially when they are dealing with them for the first time. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature.

Philosophy, law and ethics, to be effective in a dynamic world must be dynamic; they must be made vital enough to keep pace with the progress of life and science. In recent civilization ethics, because controlled by theology and law, which are static, could not duly influence the dynamic, revolutionary progress of technic and the steadily changing conditions of life; and so we witness a tremendous downfall of morals in politics and business. Life progresses faster than our ideas, and so medieval ideas, methods and judgments are constantly applied to the conditions and problems of modern life. This discrepancy between facts and ideas is greatly responsible for the dividing of modern society into different warring classes, which do not understand each other. Medieval legalism and medieval morals- the basis of the old social structure-being by their nature conservative, reactionary, opposed to change, and thus becoming more and more unable to support the mighty social burden of the modern world, must be adjudged responsible in a large measure for the circumstances which made the World War inevitable. ~ Alfred Korzybski

It would be of great use to us to form our deliberate judgments of persons and things in the calmest and serenest hours of life, when the passions of nature are all silent, and the mind enjoys its most perfect composure. ~ Isaac Watts

Josephine didn't mean to be so dismissive, but it came surprisingly easily. Then, almost as quickly, she questioned many of the judgments she'd made in her life. Mental patients can't be intelligent, junkies can't be articulate, and so on. But really, honestly, how many did she actually know? ~ Victor LaValle

You'll have to observe everyone you see, and make such judgments yourselves. ~ Lemony Snicket

You should just evaluate the work and make your judgments accordingly. That's the way you do it in life and every other subject. ~ Clint Eastwood

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinka ~ David Simon

I assure you I have zero interest in commiserating with you. I wouldn't understand your demons any more than you would understand my personal circle of hell."
Her sad eyes flicked back to mine. "Then what do you want?"
I sucked in a deep breath that did nothing to calm the eternal storm brewing within me. "Just a little company in the darkness. No questions. No judgments. No faking it. ~ Aly Martinez

It is realistic rather than cynical to observe that in a fallen world there are degrees of virtue in relation to what is right, and good and just. These are important in our human judgments of others, even though they may be blown to the winds by the grace of God. To "do good because we know it is good" is different from "doing good only because we know we are seen," and this in turn is different from "doing good only because we are afraid of being thought to be bad," which in turn is different again from "the complete abandonment of any pretense of caring about being good or being seen." The first type of action springs from what we call morality, the second respectability, the third hypocrisy, and the fourth sheer wickedness. This ~ Os Guinness

If you are constantly making judgments based on superficial affiliations, your world gets to be pretty small. ~ Larry Brilliant

The insidious reasons for a brown girl's self-loathing won't be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations - and what they mean about your worth - might not dawn on you while you're playing cricket in the sand. What's at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong. ~ William A. Dembski

What disturbs people, these are not things, but the judgments relating to things ~ Epictetus

Judgments of adequacy involve social comparison processes ~ Albert Bandura

Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Science has long been in the values business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best effort to value priinciples of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. ~ Sam Harris

First of all, it's friendship with God that makes possible friendship with one another in a manner that is not that we just like one another, but that were are joined by common judgments, by God, for the good of God's church. Such friendship occurs not by trying to be each other's friend, but by discovering you were engaged in common good work that is so determinative, you cannot live without one another. Now, if the church is that, it will talk about friendship in a way that avoids the superficiality of the language of relationship. Because relationships are meant to be spontaneous and short. Friendship, if it is the friendship of God, is to be characterized by fidelity in which you are even willing to tell the friend the truth. Which may mean you will risk the friendship. You need to be in that kind of community to survive the loneliness that threatens all of our souls. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Self-righteousness and presumptive moral judgments pose a great danger in the political arena. To become convinced of the divine infallibility of one's personal predilections on a secular political issue is to play God, to assume to oneself the attributes of deity. It cultivates an arrogant intolerance of dissenting viewpoints and relegates one's political adversaries to the category of evil per se. ~ Jim Wright

Try to go a whole seven days without having to control everything, without stressing when things don't work out as you thought they would or should. As you do this, any time you feel the need to take charge, try to relax out of it, just to see what happens. Look for the good that happened precisely because things didn't work out the way you thought they would or should.

And take your time. There really is no desperate hurry. When we constantly pursue perfection, our life speeds up. We make hasty decisions and snap judgments. Wabi sabi offers an opportunity to pause, reflect, check in with yourself and move from there. You'll likely feel relived, and make better choices. ~ Beth Kempton

His judgments are just; His mercy without limit; His power to compensate beyond any earthly comparison. ~ Boyd K. Packer

Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly. ~ Alex Garland

[T]he success of democracy depends, in the end, on the reliability of the judgments we citizens make, and hence upon our capacity and determination to weigh arguments and evidence rationally. ~ Irving M. Copi

The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it. ~ Comte De Lautreamont

It is easier to overcome people's judgments than to overcome our own self-judgment ... ~ Arianna Huffington

VANNBRUGGHE. (Spitting upon the floor) But the bounds of the Mind are yet unknown: we form our Judgments too much on what has been done without knowing what might be done. Originals must soar into the region of Liberty.

DYER. And then fall down, since they have Wings made only of Wax. Why prostrate your Reason to meer Nature? We live off the Past: it is in our Words and our Syllables. It is reverberant in our Streets and Courts, so that we can scarce walk across the Stones without being reminded of those who walked there before us; the Ages before our own are like an Eclipse which blots out the Clocks and Watches of our present Artificers and, in that Darkness, the Generations jostle one another. It is the dark of Time from which we come and to which we will return.

VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What is this stuff about Time? (To Dyer) This is well said, but this Age of ours is quite new. The World was never more active or youthful than it is now, and all this Imitation of the past is but the Death's Head of Writing as it is of Architecture. ~ Peter Ackroyd

We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale. ~ Charles Francis Richter