A Quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.

And violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making; in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote Topics

About Because Blind Bring Cannot Constructive Descending Destruction Destructive Ending Ends Everybody Eye Eye For An Eye History Ideal Immoral Impractical Inseparable Leaving Long Long Run Making Means Old Philosophy Represent Run Spiral Up Violence

Quote Author

Martin Luther King, Jr.
American - Leader
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

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 will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately 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.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot have peaceful means - peaceful means will have to be used to bring about peaceful ends. If you use destructive means, you're going to bring about destructive ends.

Coretta Scott King

The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Your policy should be a mixture between your interests and how you reach your ends, but based on values. It cannot be only the end justifies the means, because for the criminals, ends justify the means, for thieves, for every illegal and immoral action, the end justifies the means.

Bashar al-Assad

Fighting is not the best way to win an argument. If carried to its ultimate conclusions, the old idea of "an eye for an eye" eventually ends in making everybody blind.

Sterling W Sill

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

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

A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.

Paulo Coelho

So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now it is usual-but not to say normal-for people to interest themselves primarily in means, without noticing that means exist only in relation to ends and that, in accepting certain means, they unconsciously accept the ends that make them so. In other words, they accept whatever philosophy happens to be embodied in the values and institutions of a particular civilation.

Georges Canguilhem

The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody.