A Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Ursula K. Le Guin

Quote Topics

End Means Never

Quote Author

Ursula K. Le Guin
American - Novelist
October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018

You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.

Wilhelm Reich

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.

Nick Harkaway

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

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

Penn Jillette

We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psycho-physical means whereby that end is to be gained. So far as we are concerned, any old means is good enough. But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Aldous Huxley

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

John Dewey

I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.

Elie Wiesel

There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

Richard M. Nixon

If you FAIL, never give up because F.A.I.L. means "First Attempt in Learning". END is not the end; in fact E.N.D. means "Effort Never Dies". If you get NO as an answer, remember N.O. means "Next Opportunity".

Abdul Kalam

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

Saul Alinsky

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

Leon Trotsky

Propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If the means achieves the end then the means is good... the new Ministry has no other aim than to unite the nation behind the ideal of the national revolution.

Joseph Goebbels

Too soon we breast the tape and too late we realize the fun lay in the running. We deny that the end justifies the means without ever stopping to consider that for practical purposes the End and the Means are one and the same thing. If there is to be any satisfaction in life it must come in transit, for who can tell when he will be struck down in mid-method?

Walt Kelly

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.

I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. The truth of the mater is that hierarchy and violence can't be remedied by more hierarchy and violence. The end doesn't justify the means, the means we choose decide the end we get. The means are the end.