Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven
Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist
Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics
Context: People … become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.
Michael Nava (1954) American writer
Source: The Burning Plain (1997), p.258 (Chapter 20)
“This is not an end, but only a means to an end.”
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
“There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.”
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428
“Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”
Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf
Source: Mein Kampf
Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 8