Charles Wagner Quotes

The end must justify the means.

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

If the ends don't justify the means, what does?

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

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

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.

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

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 ends do not always justify the means

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

People will justify whatever for a good cause.

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

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

I would not hold that we must judge by the favorable or adverse result alone whether an undertaking was just or unjust.

The problem with absolutist beliefs that they can get you into traps in which the ends justify the means.

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

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

I never think the ends justify the means.

He uses common sense to judge not the intentions of an action but its consequences.

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

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

The end doesn't justify anything, because all we ever live with is the means.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.

What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'