Brent Scowcroft Quotes

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

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

The end must justify the means.

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

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

Fundamentalists are crazy. They're the real world equivalent to the evil geniuses of our spy fiction and our superhero comics. They want to mold the world into a specific shape that they really believe in, and if you don't believe in that, if you can't relate to that, it just seems crazy.

We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot.

I don't think any extremism is rational.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

Terrorists are dangerous, not because they are immoral or amoral but because they are hyper moral. They justify their behavior in profoundly moral language.

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.

Terror … is often the result of giving politics a sacred, absolute dimension.

Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.

The ideologue says “whatever is right works.” The pragmatist says “whatever works is right.”

… contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

Heartless zealotry, whether from the religious right or from the teachers' union on the left, is always troubling.

If the end is right, it justifies the beans!

But as in all cults, what's central to the Communist Party is the belief system and the elimination of nuance. From there you're very slowly led down the road to fanaticism and mass murder.

Claiming that you have got the truth wrapped up does breed violence and intolerance.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.