46 Judgment Quotes

In our daily lives, judgment is unavoidable. Whether we're making decisions about our own paths or assessing the choices of others, judgment plays a crucial role in shaping our thoughts and actions. How we perceive and evaluate situations can significantly impact our personal growth, relationships, and overall outlook on life. To provide some insight and inspiration, we’ve curated a collection of the top 46 judgment quotes. These thought-provoking quotes are designed to offer perspective and encourage contemplation on the nature of judgment. With wisdom from various thinkers, this collection aims to shed light on how we can approach judgment with fairness, empathy, and understanding.

1. “It doesn't matter what you do. In the end, you are going to be judged, and all the times that you're not at your most dignified are the ones that will be recalled in all their vivid, heartbreaking detail. And then of course these things will be distorted and exaggerated and replayed over and over, until eventually they turn into the essence of you: your cartoon.” - Dan Chaon

2. “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” - Coco Chanel

3. “A man should always have these two rules in readiness. First, to do only what the reason of your ruling and legislating faculties suggest for the service of man. Second, to change your opinion whenever anyone at hand sets you right and unsettles you in an opinion, but this change of opinion should come only because you are persuaded that something is just or to the public advantage, not because it appears pleasant or increases your reputation.” - Marcus Aurelius

4. “If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.” - Benjamin Franklin

5. “We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.” - Benjamin Franklin

6. “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” - Rita Mae Brown

7. “Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?” - Eckhart Tolle

8. “Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.” - Jane Austen

9. “We do not want to have mercy for the things God has under judgment. We do not want to fall in the ditch on the otherside of unsanctified mercy.” - Rick Joyner

10. “What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it.” - Jane Austen

11. “..... it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.” - Malcolm Gladwell

12. “We inhabit a world in which we tend to put labels on each other and expect that we will then march through life wearing them like permanent sandwich boards.” - Nick Webb

13. “You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.” - Andrew Solomon

14. “Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.” - Amos Tversky

15. “God has judged me all my life. But that is God's privilege, my lady. Not yours.” - Barbara Hambly

16. “The suicide passes a judgment. Society does not care to examine the judgment, but in defense of itself as is, condemns the suicide.” - Robert E. Neale

17. “...sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

18. “Judgment is easy: it is black and white, as brutal as a gavel strike.” - Luanne Rice

19. “Such Excessive Preoccupation With The Faults Of Others Only Manages To Bring The Spotlight To Shine Bright On Whatever It Is You May Have Hiding Behind All Your Self Perceived Glory.” - Marcie Leeper

20. “You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.Otherwise, cede your gavel.” - Vera Nazarian

21. “A strong life force can be seen in physical vitality, courage, competent judgment, self-mastery, sexual vigor, and the realization of each person’s unique talents and purpose in life. To maintain a powerful life force, forget yourself, forget about living and dying, and bring your full attention into this moment.” - H.E. Davey

22. “It may...be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.” - Mary Shelley

23. “If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.” - Junot Diaz

24. “With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.” - Criss Jami

25. “Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.” - Criss Jami

26. “The devil's happy when the critics run you off.” - Criss Jami

27. “There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact.” - Gene Siskel

28. “I think that I am too warm to negatively judge individuals, yet I am cold enough to negatively judge humanity.” - Criss Jami

29. “Good judgment comes from bad experience. Unfortunately, most of that comes from bad judgment.- Tara Daniels -” - Jill Shalvis

30. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë

31. “In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.” - Euripides

32. “You understand nothing," I told him with a weary shake of the head, but I would not try to make him understand. That there was no justification for it: the murder of another, no matter how vile. We had all been wrong and, blackest of ironies, I had known this to hold that precious and wondrous thing, life, in my hands. To hold it in my hands before I destroyed it.” - Krisi Keley

33. “Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” - Brené Brown

34. “I thought of Shelley in the hospital, how she said sometimes sadness only looked like anger and judgment. Maybe fear did too.” - Holly Cupala

35. “I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.''That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.” - Anne Brontë

36. “It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our final day (attributed to Matthew Henry)” - Francis Chan

37. “They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

38. “A true Christian does not judge whether a person is worthy of help, but only judges a need and how to best meet that need.” - Toni Sorenson

39. “It's so egotistical to believe that we know more about someone else's reality than they do, and such a waste of time.” - Shreve Stockton

40. “There is such a thing as righteous judgment, but it seems that lately the word 'judgment' has become a curse word, period. The issue isn't whether or not we're insightful enough to avoid being judgmental, but whether or not we're secure enough to accept being judged. It is inevitable for every conscious human being to judge. It may spring from insight and experience and sincerity, and in such cases, it is quite beneficial on the receiving end.” - Criss Jami

41. “…It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean, I know we're all supposed to believe that, but obviously, none of us actually do. And nor should we, because it does! It does matter! And the people who genuinely believe it doesn't tend to be the very people who ought to care most what other people think of them, because what the other people are thinking is, 'No, actually, I don't think the Chinese are "up to something,"' or, 'You should use mouthwash,' or, 'Your mania for the collective socialization of agriculture will surely cause the deaths of millions,' or, 'Forty cats is too many cats.” - David Mitchell

42. “Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.” - Criss Jami

43. “The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life” - Lin Yutang

44. “And, thinking of this judgment I would no longer be able to change, I suddenly felt a kind of relief, as if peace could come to me only after the moment when there would be nothing to add and nothing to remove in that arbitrary ledger of misunderstandings, and the galaxies which were gradually reduced to the last tail of the last luminous ray, winding from the sphere of darkness, seemed to bring with them the only possible truth about myself, and I couldn’t wait until all of them, one after the other, had followed this path.” - Italo Calvino

45. “One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.” - Tim Kreider

46. “If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer