Paulo Coelho Quotes

You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

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

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

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.

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

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

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

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.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.

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

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.

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

It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.