Means and ends quotes:

Send

All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends. -- Nancy Gibbs
Ballet is a riddle of means and ends. -- Gelsey Kirkland
One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. -- Saul Alinsky
The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.... -- Saul Alinsky
The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. -- Saul Alinsky
In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We need to explore the relationship between means and ends. Purposes grow out of situations. One may find the pursuit first and then this brings the purpose. -- David Hawkins
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline. -- Jacob Bronowski
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself. -- Jawaharlal Nehru
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. -- Oscar Wilde
Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value. -- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Composing means you have a beginning, middle and end and a fluidity to what you're doing. -- Sandra Bullock
Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end. -- Jack Kerouac
Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. -- Immanuel Kant
I understand that the end does not justify the means. And this should be a lasting value for democracy. -- Park Geun-hye
You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. -- Billie Holiday
Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise. -- Charles Horton Cooley
Law professors like Obama tend to view the law as one means to an end, and others, like myself, tend to view it as the end itself. -- Jonathan Turley
For Republicans, accepting responsibility means accepting punishment; for Democrats, it means only an admission of error and a suggestion they'll do better in the future. This double standard must end. -- Monica Crowley
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. -- Eric Hoffer
I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world. -- Michelle Shocked
I want people to understand that I intend to continue living and doing all the things that I love to do up until the end. And the end is by no means rushing up on me. -- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end. -- Ramakrishna
In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind. -- Gilbert Parker
Man is a means and not an end, and he is a means to economic or political ends which are not really ends in themselves but means to other ends which in their turn are means and so ad infinitum. -- Christopher Dawson
I like to say, 'Chop suey's the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another,' because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means 'tsap sui,' which, if you translate back, means 'odds and ends.' -- Jennifer Lee
No ends, simply means. -- Albert Camus
the ends justifies the means -- Niccolo Machiavelli
Means are ends in the making -- Mahatma Gandhi
The ends must justify the means. -- Matthew Prior
The ends do not justify the means -- Seth
Historically, means cannot be separated from ends ... -- Harold Laski
The ends and means are a seamless web. -- Gloria Steinem
We deliberate not about ends, but about means. -- Aristotle
Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means. -- Emily Giffin
[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training. -- Steve Martin
the ends never justify the means because IT never ends. -- Martha Gellhorn
When we deliberate it is about means and not ends. -- Aristotle
If the ends don't justify the means, then what does? -- Robert Moses
I think in general the ends do not justify the means. -- Howard Dean
Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means. -- Henri Frederic Amiel
Wealth is neither an ends nor a means, it is a symptom. -- Christopher Dutton
Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means. -- Francis Hutcheson
Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means. -- Max McKeown
By the same means we do not always arrive at the same ends. -- Cesar Vichard de Saint-Real
Only he without sin can tell me if my means justify my ends. -- Jay-Z
The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means. -- Robert Kennedy
Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end. -- Immanuel Kant
Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means. -- Jimmy Carter
Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical. -- Adam Phillips
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value -- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends. -- Immanuel Kant
That the means of imperialist policy overshadow almost entirely its original ends has tremendous implications. -- Paul A. Baran
Poor, dear God. Playing Idiot's Delight. The game that never means anything, and never ends. -- Robert E. Sherwood
Profit has to be a means to other ends rather than an end in itself. -- Charles Handy
Good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends. -- Maria Callas
What is wisdom? It is the skill to achieve the perfect means by the perfect ends -- Aiden Wilson Tozer
The history of all the world tells us that immoral means will ever intercept good ends. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means. -- Amartya Sen
An organized product of nature is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means. -- Immanuel Kant
In the last few years we have learned to distinguish the means of Socialism from the ends. -- Hugh Gaitskell
Evil is not likely to result where people firmly believe that ends do not justify the means. -- Roy Baumeister
I believe that it is an unchanging value of democracy that ends cannot justify the means in politics. -- Park Geun-hye
Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right. -- Fulton J. Sheen
The ends justify the means mindset has been the impetus behind many a cruel medical or social experiment. -- James Morcan
Means are not to be distinguished from ends. If violent means are used, there will be bad results. -- Mahatma Gandhi
it is just as wrong, or even perhaps more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends. -- Enoch Powell
You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends. -- Charles Colson
The essence of strategy is to align your ends with your means: to match your goals and your resources. -- Walter Russell
To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
--
To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. -- Saul Alinsky
Or perhaps in Slytherin, you'll make your real friends. Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends. -- J. K. Rowling
You can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Liberation movements - prizing ends over means - are not always particular about their friends or scrupulous about their transactions. -- Bill Keller
Wisdom is the power to perceive the best ends to aim at and the best means for reaching those ends. -- Wallace D. Wattles
A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means... -- Paulo Coelho
To be well-educated is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends. -- Alfie Kohn
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble. -- Alan Perlis
Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. -- Bill Vaughan
I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good - goods - we have transformed means into ends. -- Erich Fromm
Does the end justify the means? Or should it be, Do the ends justify the mean; do the extremes justify moderation? -- Daniel N. Robinson
Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington. -- Elliott Abrams
The profound immoralities of our time are cruelty, indifference, injustice and the use of others as means rather than ends in themselves. -- Sydney J. Harris
Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death. -- Milan Kundera
I'll put it to you this way: I never, ever think about the things that I get involved with on a macro means-to-an-ends scale. -- Matthew Fox
But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end. -- Aldous Huxley
Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends. -- Simone de Beauvoir
The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right. -- William J. Brennan
The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends. -- Maria Callas
I am more interested in the purpose of government than its mechanics-though the means should at least be good enough to lead to the ends desired. -- Aminu Kano
I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work. -- Michael Helm
Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself. -- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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. -- Jacques Ellul
In a market economy with the division and specialization of labor, people use others as means to achieve their ends. This is the essence of market cooperation. -- Stephan Kinsella
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. -- Alex Gibney
Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed. -- Howard Zinn
Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends. -- William Whewell
I'm an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like. -- Barbara Kruger
Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. -- Paul Fussell
Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls. -- James L. Buckley

Send