Quotes About Consequences

The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them.

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity

You see, I'd behaved pretty badly. Losing my head about someone I didn't really love and hurting someone I did. Why is one so stupid? The heart has its reasons, said Will, and the endocrines have theirs.

Habit is as fatal to a sense of wrongdoing as to active enjoyment.

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.

The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better than one should suffer than that many should be corrupted.

And yet our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine the nature of the result achieved; whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad means we use to reach it.

In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous.

Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the debilitating or anti-social consequences of past punishments.

Cuanto mayores son los talentos de un hombre más grande es su poder de corromper a los demás. Y es mejor que sufra uno solo a que se corrompan muchos. (...) El asesino sólo mata al individuo, y, al fin y al cabo, ¿qué es un individuo? Podemos fabricar otro nuevo con la mayor facilidad; tantos como queramos.

Murder kills only the individual.

We are given two choices—famine, pestilence and war on the one hand, birth control on the other.

science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.

Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

El muchacho no había tenido mala intención. Lo cual, en cierta manera, empeoraba aún más las cosas. Los que le querían bien se comportaban lo mismo que los que le querían mal.

The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis [from Greek mythology] has seen to it we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than dropping bombs and fire has given pain?

The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous; but meanwhile nemesis [from Greek mythology] has seen to it we get our kicks as well as halfpence. For example, has the ability to travel in twelve hours from New York to Los Angeles given more pleasure to the human race than dropping bombs and fire has given pain?

the man had meant well enough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

Light illuminates the path of humanity: it is our own fault if we go over the brink.

El odio es ciego, la cólera aturdida y el que vierte la venganza corre el riesgo de beber un brebaje amargo

La vida no siempre es lo que ocurre, sino las secuelas de lo que parece ser.

It is often the way of the world that goodness is often repaid with badness.

when the man would be responsible for everything he speaks in vain. -He's responsible when that, which he speaks in vain, causes a misfortune.