Wendell Berry on Ends and Means

" . . . we have come to attribute to ends a moral importance that far

outweighs that which we attribute to means. As though we have arrived in our
minds at a new age of fantasy or magic, we expect ends not only to justify
means, but to rectify them as well. Once we have reached the desired end,
we think, we will turn back to purify and consecrate the means. Once the
war that we are fighting for the sake of peace is won, then the generals
will become saints, the burned children will proclaim in heaven that their
suffering is well repaid, the poisoned forests and fields will turn green
again. Once we have peace, we say, or abundance or justice or truth or
comfort, everything will be all right. It is an old dream.

It is a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends is no discipline at
all. The end is preserved in the means; a Hope lives in the means,

not the end. . . . That good ends are destroyed by bad means is one of the
dominant themes of human wisdom."