end in itself

1. A purpose or goal desired for its own sake (rather than to attain something else). For example, For me, writing books is an end in itself; they don't really make that much money. This expression employs the noun end in the sense of “final cause or purpose,” a usage dating from the early 1500s.

Example Sentences

This is about chilling and terrorizing opponents as an end in itself.

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It seems there is a baked-in sense that those debates were an end in themselves, that kind of debating is an end in itself, for equality and liberty and dignity as we think about it as a constitutional value.

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I have tended to come out on the side of the principle that since the only alternative to law is raw power, the law must by necessity be an end in itself.

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CASA, in which she reminds us that long before the law was a solution, it was a problem, and that for millions of people, particularly vulnerable people with Black and brown skin, the law has almost universally been the instrument to create and support injustice, the actual end in itself.

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Running out the clock as an end in itself.

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