Michele Bachmann Quotes

Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

You got to wrestle with your conscience. You got to listen to people. It doesn't come so easy to me that this is right and that's wrong. It's never that simple.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

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.

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

When you're put in a position where you're having to decide, Is this a good decision? Is this the right decision for everybody involved? - it makes me feel a little unsteady, unsure.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Because it's possible to do, and you have the right to do it, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

Economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a science of the means to be applied for attainment of ends chosen, not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science. Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends.

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

It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?

Science is important, but so is ethics, so is balancing life. To destroy life to save life - it's one of the real ethical dilemmas that we face.

The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required.

Then why do you want to know?" "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain.