Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns
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Immanuel Kant 200
German philosopher 1724–1804Related quotes
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6
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.
“This is not an end, but only a means to an end.”
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
“There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.”
Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428
“Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”
Source: Mein Kampf
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 8