Ends Justify Means Quotes

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

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

Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.

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

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

Only he without sin can tell me if my means justify my ends.

The result justifies the deed.

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.

Assuming you get useful information from torture, then why not always use torture? Why stop at the bomb that’s already been planted and people who know where the explosives are? Why not people who are building the explosives, or people who are donating money, or transferring the funds for the explosives? Why stop at the victim himself? Why not torture the victims’ families, their relatives, their neighbors? If the end justifies the means, then where would you draw the line?

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

Although I was aware they were illegal. We had become somewhat inured to using some activities that would help us in accomplishing what we thought was a legitimate cause

Whoever places greater emphasis upon the product rather than the process, upon an all-sanctifying end rather than upon the means for achieving it, is opening the doors of anarchy

Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.

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

The viciousness, the lack of rules, is so absolute within the leftist framework that the ends justify the means, that my media is very much organized to try and go toe-to-toe with those people to say we know what your motivations are, we know how vicious you are, but we are not afraid of you.

If the end is right, it justifies the beans!

Your policy should be a mixture between your interests and how you reach your ends, but based on values. It cannot be only the end justifies the means, because for the criminals, ends justify the means, for thieves, for every illegal and immoral action, the end justifies the means.

Many of us, whether in the jungles of Asia or on the streets of Chicago, had discovered that noble causes can lead to ignoble actions and that we were capable of sacrificing honor to a sense of efficacy.