end in itself
Noun
Meaning
end in itself (plural ends in themselves)
Something that is desired for its own sake, and not as a means of obtaining something else.
Alternative names
end-in-itself
Antonyms
Related terms
Examples
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.
When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.
For domination has nothing whatsoever to do with good government, and power as an end in itself destroys good government.
Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.
Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.
Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits-the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.