David Hume Quotes

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.

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

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

It seems that the world considers whoever gets benefit is the virtuous one

The end must justify the means.

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

…the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me, of all the philosophical theories, the most attuned to the needs of men in our time, and I see in it the most powerful safeguard men have left against themselves.

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.

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

Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.

Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.

Politically, economically and philosophically the motive of self-interest not only is but must...and ought to be the mainspring of human conduct...

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

The issue is not whether there are serious moral and practical costs to employing torture—of course there are for torture is evil. That is precisely why the choice of whether employ it to avert a greater evil is a tragic one.

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.

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

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

I don't fight for anybody else besides myself and my family, so therefore I win.

The feelings of the individual are the prime authority in ethics. 'If it feels good, do it' is the basic ethical ideal of humanism.

I killed one man to save 100,000.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Be good only if being bad ain't more fun.