Ends Justify The Means Quotes

• The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

  Georges Bernanos

  Mean, Tyrants, Deception

  Georges Bernanos (1955). “Last essays”

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• To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Mean, Government, Order

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Mean, What If, Ends

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “The Lathe Of Heaven: A Novel”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• The ends justifies the means.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Mean, Ends, Justify

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2003). “Discourses on Livy”, p.444, OUP Oxford

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• The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

  Leon Trotsky

  Freedom, Philosophy, Mean

  "When It Comes to Personal Transformation, Could the Ends Be the Means?" by Russell Bishop, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 9, 2011.

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• The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.

  John Dewey

  Mean, Desire, Used

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Steven M. Cahn (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939”, p.321, SIU Press

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• You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Mean, Thinking, Upheaval

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• There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

  Aaron Allston

  Philosophy, Mean, Evil

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• There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Mean, Long, Community

  Richard M. Nixon's speech on the October Crisis (October 1970) as quoted in Louis Fournier "F.L.Q: The Anatomy of an Underground movement" (p. 256), 1984.

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• Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Historical, Doe

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.292, Vintage

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• Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mean, Breathing Space, History

  Arthur Koestler (2015). “Darkness at Noon”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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• The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

  Henry Grady Weaver

  Mean, Views, Agony

  Henry Grady Weaver (2016). “The Mainspring of Human Progress [Revised Edition]”, p.38, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Teacher, Mean, Men

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Liberty, Principles

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 10 : Why The Worst Get On Top, 1940 - 1943.

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• And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

  Nick Harkaway

  Life, Mean, Ends

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• Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

  Emily Giffin

  Mean, Black And White, Sometimes

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• I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.

  Elie Wiesel

  Mean, Communism, Nazi

  Interview with Professor Georg Klein, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2004.

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• The ends justify the means mindset has been the impetus behind many a cruel medical or social experiment.

  James Morcan

  Mean, Medical, Mindset

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• Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  War, Government, Law

  Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

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• In the 17 years since I graduated from this great College of Law, I have seen that, for many of us, it becomes increasingly easy to rationalize our actions in the name of expediency when facing difficult decisions-to choose a path where the ends justify the means. I want to ask you to challenge Machiavelli's philosophy. I want to humbly suggest that you be the guardians of a more complicated truth: that the means are as important-and sometimes even more important-than the ends.

  Beau Biden

  Philosophy, Mean, College

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• The end doesn't justify the means.

  Ovid

  Inspirational, Mean, Ends

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• The darkness that we see in our world today is due to the disintegration of things out of harmony with God's laws. The basic conflict is not between nations, it is between two opposing beliefs. The first is that evil can be overcome by more evil, that the end justifies the means. This belief is very prevalent in our world today. It is the war way. It is the official position of every major nation.

  Peace Pilgrim

  War, Mean, Two

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• In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Mean, Ideas, Done

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• The viciousness, the lack of rules, is so absolute within the leftist framework that the ends justify the means, that my media is very much organized to try and go toe-to-toe with those people to say we know what your motivations are, we know how vicious you are, but we are not afraid of you.

  Andrew Breitbart

  Motivation, Mean, Media

  Source: www.newsbusters.org

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• Your policy should be a mixture between your interests and how you reach your ends, but based on values. It cannot be only the end justifies the means, because for the criminals, ends justify the means, for thieves, for every illegal and immoral action, the end justifies the means.

  Bashar al-Assad

  Mean, Criminals, Thieves

  The Associated Press Interview, www.foxnews.com. September 21, 2016.

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