Failure in bureaucracy means not bankruptcy but writing self-justifying memos, and at worst a transfer elsewhere.

ECONOMIST: Technology and the public sector

Jacott is a one-man study in self-justifying paralysis (the movie's funniest scene is his quivering interview for a video-store job).

CNN: ENTERTAINMENT

And like her angry reaction to her devoted nurses, often all my teachers got from me in return for their effort was angry, self-justifying, fearful resistance.

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Of course that can be a self-justifying argument.

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The real story in antitrust's continued popularity is not the flood of new theories, justifying a new activism, but the influence of beleaguered competitors like Netscape and the self-serving arguments of lawyers and economic consultants who stand to gain from an activist policy, regardless of the outcome for the rest of us.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear fallout