"Lies and consequences." in The American Prospect (19 May 2002) http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lies_and_consequences&gId=6282
Context: To rationalize their lies, people — and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose — are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just. Clinton may have lied to preserve his power while telling himself that he was lying to protect “the people” who benefited from his presidency. Liars — especially liars in power — often conflate their interest with the public interest. (What’s good for General Motors is good for the United States.) Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations. Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. We can’t condemn lying categorically, but we should categorically suspect it.
“You say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause!”
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
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Friedrich Nietzsche 655
German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl… 1844–1900Related quotes
“A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.”
537-539
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I
Context: A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God's sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.
“Population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war.”
Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 1 (p. 9).
“The cause of war is preparation for war.”
Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 75
"Non-Resistance and The Present War - A Reply to Mr. Russell," International Journal of Ethics (April 1915), vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 307-316
Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Context: A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. <!-- Pt. 1, Ch. 4
“There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I conquered in myself what
causes war”
In Distrust of Merits
Poetry
Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 15