Darryl Pinckney Quotes

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

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

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

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

The end must justify the means.

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

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

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

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason.

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

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

You can do anything you want, as long as it works.

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

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.

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

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.

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.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

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.

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

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

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.