The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.
[On entering the restaurant business:] Food has the dubious advantage of being legitimate, and one's customers somehow manage to live longer without sex than food, if you call that living.
Indefinite plans get dubious results.
Despite the dubious statistics … democracy is a thing of value for which we should be fighting.
What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.
Jesse [James]was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James ] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity.
I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious.
How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.
I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.
Central banks have gotten out of the central banking business and into the central planning business, meaning that they are devoted to raising up-if they can-economic growth and employment through the dubious means of suppressing interest rates and printing money. The nice thing about gold is that you can't print it.
Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.
This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.
He is a friend who, in dubious circumstances, aids in deeds when deeds are necessary.
Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.
I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical rules seems even more dubious.
Flower lifted a brow, dubious. 'You have to pay for a place to be dead in?' Moon shrugged. 'Sometimes, in cities. It’s a groundling thing.
Most Americans acquire dogs impulsively and for dubious reasons: as a Christmas gift for the kids. Because they saw one in a movie. To match the new living-room furniture. Because they moved to the suburbs and see a dog as part of the package.
One can forget the meaninglessness of his own existence by occupying himself with scientific experiments of dubious import. Countless scientists and scholars spend their lives in the search of truths that are irrelevant to them.
Information obtained under dubious circumstances cannot play a role in legal proceedings in a constitutional state. But everything that's available must be taken into account in threat prevention.
I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.
