Robert Moses Quotes

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

The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.

The ends do not always justify the means

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

The end must justify the means.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue ... Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

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

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

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

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

There is no right in acting.

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

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

I do like crossing moral boundaries.

I never think the ends justify the means.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

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

Any time the character is in a moral quandary is interesting. That's been true from the Greeks on down.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.