Quote:
"Imagine that you are creating a
fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the
end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and
inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby
beating its breast with its fist, for instance- and to found that
edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the
architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
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This is one of my favorite quotations of all time and is particularly applicible to this discussion. I could never do such a thing because I am a man who does not believe in justifying a means through its ends. Killing 63 people for world peace would forever put a taint on that peace and undermine the moral value of the world bought by it. To that end numbers are arbitrary at the point that you say yes. What about 65? 75? 100? 100,000? 1,000,000,000? At what point does it become wrong to murder for the sake of others? I could never and would never consent to those terms nor could I look upon anyone who honestly would as human.