Matthew Prior Quotes

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

If the end does not 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.

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

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

The ends justifies the means.

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

Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

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

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

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.

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

The ends do not always justify the means

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

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

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

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

Grub first, then ethics.

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

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

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.

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