It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.
Interpretation
Doing a task correctly is simpler than justifying mistakes.
This quote by Martin Van Buren emphasizes the importance of diligence and competence in any task. It suggests that taking the time to do a job properly will often save one from the complications and difficulties of explaining any failures or shortcomings that arise from negligence or poor execution.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing project deadlines, you might say this quote to encourage thorough work.
To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable consequences, I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly with the constitutional authority of the Federal Government.
In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort.
The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity.
Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeeded by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.
I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country.
The government should not be guided by Temporary Excitement, but by Sober Second Thought.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way are revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless. Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets.
I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.
I think for it to be hip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me, had some sense of hope in them.
It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.
One must lose one's life to find it.
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