Actualization of self cannot be sought as a goal in its own right. . . Rather, it seems to be a by-product of active commitment of one’s talents to some cause, outside the self, such as the quest for beauty, truth, or justice.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower