Meaning
A worthwhile outcome is claimed to excuse dishonest, cruel, or otherwise questionable actions taken to achieve it. Almost always quoted in debates about ethics and usually cited critically or in the negative to reject such reasoning, so it functions as a flagged warning about rationalization rather than neutral advice. Formal to journalistic register with a distinctly negative ring; usually quoted in order to be rejected. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The saying is popularly pinned on Machiavelli, but the sentence does not appear anywhere in The Prince (1532). Machiavelli argues in that book that a ruler who wants to keep the state must sometimes act against ordinary morality, and later readers compressed that argument into this formula; both Wiktionary and Wikipedia's treatment of consequentialism class the attribution as erroneous or disputed. The classical ancestor is Ovid's Heroides (around 10 BCE), letter II, line 85: 'exitus acta probat', the outcome justifies or proves the deeds, and the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs cites this Ovid line under the proverb. Interpreters caution that Ovid's dramatic context is not a manifesto for ruthless pragmatism. In modern English the phrase is far more often quoted in order to be denied than affirmed, serving as an emblem of bad-faith reasoning.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- Exitus acta probat
- The end does not justify the means
- The end doesn't justify the means
- The ends justify the means
Usage Examples
- The committee cut corners on the safety inspection, arguing that opening the stadium before the season began would justify the means.
- I will not lie to close this deal; in my view the end does not justify the means.
- Historians still argue about whether the decade's reforms could ever justify the means used to force them through.