Variant: It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
“Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”
Source: Mein Kampf
“Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.”
As quoted in World Marxist Review : Problems of Peace and Socialism (1958), p. 40
Context: Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself. We talk of the good of society. Is this something apart from, and transcending, the good of the individuals composing it? If the individual is ignored and sacrificed for what is considered the good of the society, is that the right objective to have?
It was agreed that the individual should not be sacrificed and indeed that real social progress will come only when opportunity is given to the individual to develop, provided "the individual" is not a selected group but comprises the whole community. The touchstone, therefore, should be how far any political or social theory enables the individual to rise above his petty self and thus think in terms of the good of all. The law of life should not be competition or acquisitiveness but cooperation, the good of each contributing to the good of all.
“Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.”
Source: Time for the Stars (1956), Chapter 7, “19,900 Ways” (p. 70)
“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.
“Democracy sometimes looks like an end in itself, but in fact it is merely a means to an end.”
Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 233.
“The 'meaning' of life is not to be found in anything other than that life itself.”
From Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1 (1947/1991)
Context: The 'meaning' of life is not to be found in anything other than that life itself. It is within it, and there is nothing beyond that. 'Meaning' cannot spill over from being; it is the direction, the movement of being, and nothing more. The 'meaning' of a proletarian's life is to be found in that life itself: in its despair, or conversely in its movement towards freedom, if the proletarian participates in the life of the proletariat, and if that life involves continuous, day-to-day action (trade-union, political...).
“Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.”
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
