60 Insightful Judgment Quotes

In the tapestry of human experience, judgment often serves as a double-edged sword, guiding decisions with wisdom or misguidance. This collection of insightful judgment quotes offers more than just words; it provides a lens through which to view the intricacies of discerning right from wrong. Whether it’s about understanding oneself or navigating complex relationships with others, these quotes illuminate the subtle art of judgment, provoking thought and introspection. Venture into these reflections and allow them to inspire a deeper comprehension of the choices we make every day.

1. “When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” - Virginia Woolf

2. “We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!” - John Adams

3. “Sì perché l'autorità dell'opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d'autorità i decreti de' passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l'avessero, avrebbono diversamente determinato.For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.” - Galileo Galilei

4. “I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.” - Albert Camus

5. “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

6. “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."[Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)]” - Edmund Burke

7. “A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.” - Virginia Woolf

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

9. “We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.” - Henry Ward Beecher

10. “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

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

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

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

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

15. “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

16. “The work is at such a high level and is so well executed, it really is a matter of taste... [Source: Project Runway — but consider, applied to the theme of book reviews, it seems apropos!]” - Tim Gunn

17. “Passing judgment on others for decisions that affect only themselves is absolutely noxious to any anarchist – not to mention it makes them less likely to experiment with the options you offer.” - CrimethInc.

18. “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

19. “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

20. “..... 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

21. “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

22. “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

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

24. “Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.” - Charlotte Brontë

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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own.” - Michel de Montaigne

29. “By choosing healthy over skinny you are choosing self-love over self-judgment. You are beautiful!” - Steve Maraboli

30. “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

31. “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

32. “It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.” - Criss Jami

33. “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

34. “These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.” - Criss Jami

35. “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

36. “In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.” - Criss Jami

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

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

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

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

41. “In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price.You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.” - Ellis Peters

42. “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

43. “... if one hasn't been through, as our people mercifully did not go through, the horrors of an occupation by a foreign power, you have no right to pronounce upon what a country does, which has been through all that.” - Anthony Eden

44. “The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.” - Julien Smith

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

46. “ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.” - Aeschylus

47. “When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

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

49. “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

50. “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

51. “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

52. “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

53. “…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

54. “If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.” - Kristin Cashore

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

56. “Anyway, what does "wrong" mean? Who decides what's wrong and what's right?” - Hiroshi Ishizaki

57. “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

58. “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

59. “Judgment, then, is not an impersonal, legalistic process. It is a matter of love, and it is something we choose for ourselves. Nor is punishment a vindictive act. God's "curses" are not expressions of hatred, but of fatherly love and discipline. Like medicinal ointment, they hurt in order to heal. They impose suffering that is remedial, restorative, and redemptive. God's wrath is an expression of His love for His wayward children.” - Scott Hahn

60. “You can not be the judge of another's wishes. If you love someone, you must believe that they know what is best for themselves.” - Katherine Marsh