No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slipperyand thought is viscous.

-Adams, Henry Brooks
  The Education of Henry  Adams, ch.31,'The Grammar of Science'.

Don't report what he says, report what he means.

-Anonymous
  Unwritten reporters'rule for covering Senator Barry Goldwater's campaign for presidential nomination. Quoted in Robert MacNeil The Right Place at the Right Time (1982).

It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Novum Organum.

We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

-Book of Common Prayer
General Thanksgiving.

This only grant me, that my means may lie Too low for envy, for contempt too high.

-Cowley, Abraham
  Essays, in Verse and Prose,'Of Myself'.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Speech at Manchester, 3  Apr.

He that purchases a manor will think to have an exact survey of the land, but who thinks of taking so exact a survey of his conscience, how that money was got that purchased that manor? We call that a man's means, which he hath; but that is truly his means, what way he came by it.

-Donne,John
  Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir  William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

Perfections of means and confusion of goals seemöin my opinionöto characterize our age.

-Einstein, Albert
  Out of My LaterYears.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small meansöone feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortunemay naturally indulgeina few delinquencies.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Scenes of Clerical Life, ch.25.

It really means nothing in this country whatsoeveröbut then being a writer here means nothing either.

-Golding, Sir William (Gerald)
  On winning the Nobel prize. Quoted in the Observer, 31 May.

Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.

-Hutcheson, Francis
  An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, treatise1, sect.5.

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

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
  Ends and Means, ch.1.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has donehitherto isto improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
  Ends and Means, ch.1.

The philosophy which isso important in each of us isnot a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means† it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.

-James,William
  Pragmatism, lecture1.

Politics are now nothing morethanmeans of rising inthe world.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,18  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

Fine clothes are good onlyas they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark, 27 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

Handle so, dass du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloÞ als Mittel brauchst. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

-Kant, Immanuel
  Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals), ch.2 (translated by H  J Paton).

Poetry can communicate the actual quality of experience with a subtletyand precision unapproachable by any other means.

-Leavis, F(rank) R(aymond)
  New Bearings in English Poetry, ch.2.

I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on. I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.

-Mill,John Stuart
  Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

   Power isnot a means, it is an end.One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  Nineteen Eighty-Four, pt.3, ch.3.