Means Over Ends Quotes

All goals apart from the means are illusions; becoming is a denial of being.

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

Historians of the future will examine how and why, the end disappearing behind the means, the Communists spirit ceased to be opposed to the Fascist spirit, and even to be differentiated from it.

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

Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.

You can't get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it.

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

The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they're organized for.

Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.

Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.

If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.

I totally reject and have rejected throughout my entire career the proposition that the end justifies the means or that a judge should decide cases based on a desire to reach a certain outcome.

The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.