Aaron Allston Quotes

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

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.

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.

If you're going to figure something out, study ethics. You can ask What's the answer? What's Right and Wrong? What I learned is that nobody knows the answer and there is no Right and Wrong. So I'm incapable of becoming a fundamentalist because there are no absolutes, there's always a what if.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

In the 17 years since I graduated from this great College of Law, I have seen that, for many of us, it becomes increasingly easy to rationalize our actions in the name of expediency when facing difficult decisions-to choose a path where the ends justify the means. I want to ask you to challenge Machiavelli's philosophy. I want to humbly suggest that you be the guardians of a more complicated truth: that the means are as important-and sometimes even more important-than the ends.

Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.

The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.

the ends never justify the means because IT never ends.

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

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.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'

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

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

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

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

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.