Bashir Assad Quotes

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 Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.

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.

Ethics and power are separate. Ethics and morality. I think life would be miserable if there weren't some kind of code that people operated by, but history is full of many, many people who have gotten power by very unethical means, and people who were very ethical, who get no power, people who have the most brilliant, lovely, wonderful, nice intentions and bring about horrible things in the world because they don't know how to play the power game.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.

I've always been strongly on the side of non-violence. Also, I think that if you use the wrong means, the ends themselves get distorted.

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.

A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing.

Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.

But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

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

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.

As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions.

The end does not justify the means. If we try to be someone we are not in order to achieve a result, then the result cannot help but be something other than what we intended.

Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.

Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life - and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain.

Integrity means having the courage to do what is right, and what is aligned with your values, no matter the situation.

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.