End justifies the means Quotes

“The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the 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.”

“Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.”

“To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.”

“The end justifies the means. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right result.”

“But don't they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere.""'They?' Who are 'they?'""I don't know. Just people.""That's what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. 'All is fair.' 'The end justifies the means.' Is that what you believe?”

“No matterwhat he did to make Claire’s life better or show her he’d changed, these memories would always linger in the recesses of his mind. For the rest of his life, he’d know what he’d done. Tony hated himself for all of it—hell, he always had the end justifies the means argument, but even he didn’t believe that anymore. Not now. Not now that he knew Claire and loved Claire.”

“It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? "We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.”