Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.
For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle, confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn't achieve the "zone," if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from.
When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.
We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.
It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.
And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.
How do you tell a valuable French book?' 'First there are the pictures. Then it is a question of the quality of the pictures. Then it is the binding. If a book is good, the owner will have it bound properly. All books in English are bound, but bound badly. There is no way of judging them.
After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.
God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians.... Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods?