“As though you could use violent, unjust means and achieve peace and justice! Means determine ends; and must be like the ends proposed. Means intrinsically different from the ends proposed achieve ends like themselves, not like those they were meant to achieve.”
“But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.”
“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”
“...the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?”
“Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.”
“The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive, even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would like to act and his feelings would like to believe; but his nerve-endings and his cleverness won't allow it.”
“Ending is better than mending.”