By any means necessary is a translation of a phrase coined by the French intellectual Jean Paul Sartre in his play Dirty Hands. It entered the popular culture through a speech given by Malcolm X in the last year of his life. It is generally considered to leave open all available tactics for the desired ends, including violence; however, the “necessary” qualifier adds a caveat—if violence is not necessary, then presumably, it should not be used.
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Famous quotes containing the word means:
“Honesty, respectability, the “what-will-people-say”, the wisdom of nations, nothing means anything any more. Everything disappears before fear. Fear, eh, Caesonia, that noble sentiment, unallayed, pure and disinterested, one of those rare ones that get their nobility from the belly.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)