Leon Trotsky Quotes

The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

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

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

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

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

One must be especially wary of an Administration that seems to feel that what it judges to be a good end, always justifies any means.

The end must justify the means.

We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

Even when we see somebody incredibly evil, there's a rationalization behind what they're doing. They're at their best when they're at the moment.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

The plea of necessity, that eternal argument of all conspirators.

The end never justifies the means because there is no end; there are only means.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.