You think the end justifies the means, however vile. I tell you: the end is the means by which you achieve it. Today's step is tomorrow's life. Great ends cannot be attained by base means. You've proved that in all your social upheavals. The meanness and inhumanity of the means make you mean and inhuman and make the end unattainable.
Interpretation
The means used to achieve an end are as important as the end itself.
This quote by Wilhelm Reich emphasizes that the methods we employ to achieve our goals significantly influence the nature of those goals. It argues that using immoral or base means ultimately tarnishes the outcome, suggesting that noble ends require equally noble means, as the character and quality of our actions shape the very future we are trying to create.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about ethical decision-making in business.
Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind. In other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept.
The working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are responsible for everything that takes place, the good things and the bad things. True enough, they suffer most from a war, but it is their apathy, craving for authority, etc., that is most responsible for making wars possible. It follows of necessity from this responsibility that the working masses of men and women, they and they alone, are capable of establishing lasting peace.
I know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.
There is no proof. There are no authorities whatever. No president, Academy, Court of Law, Congress or Senate on this earth has the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow. There is no use in trying to prove something that is unknown to somebody who is ignorant of the unknown, or fearful of its threatening power. Only the good old rules of learning will eventually bring about understanding of what has invaded our earthly existence.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba, the cell will completely collapse and become nothing. That's kind of what it's like being famous. People say hi, how are you doing, and after the thousandth time, you just get angry; you really pop.
Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"
When you read about a car crash in which two or three youngsters are killed, do you pause to dwell on the amount of love and treasure and patience parents poured into bodies no longer suitable for open caskets?
Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.
You are a slave of what you need in your soul.
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