Definition of "self-justifying" [self-justifying]

• Making excuses for oneself or one's behavior. (adjective)
• Justifying text margins automatically: a self-justifying printer. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "There were none of the self-justifying excuses that are often employed by someone intent on doing something stupid."
• "Of course, the “need” to manage wolves is both a self-created and self-justifying excuse to kill animals that most hunters wish would just go away or at least believe should be kept at much lower numbers ...."
• "In Lolita, the narrator, Humbert Humbert recounts in a manner that is both self-castigating and self-justifying his hopeless passion for the 12-year-old American girl Dolores Haze."