Emily Giffin Quotes

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's purely good or purely evil myself. I think most of us live with some varying degrees between the two.

The ends justifies the means.

The end must justify the means.

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

I don't think anybody's all good or all bad.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason.

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.

There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two.

We ought to see clearly that the end does justify the means

One clings to principles for only as long as they are not put to the test. When that happens one throws them away as the peasant does his slippers.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

We aren't the good guys, Anita. We're the necessary guys. -Edward

When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"

Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.

At pivotal moments throughout history, there have always been grey areas, and there likely will be in the future. Courage now lies not in the black and white, as in the past, but in the grey.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

What 'True Blood' does really well is that it balances on the line between good and evil - you blur the distinction between the two.

Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done.

In the world we make good as evil and evil as good.

Well, you know, in any novel you would hope that the hero has someone to push back against, and villains - I find the most interesting villains those who do the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. Either one is interesting. I love the gray area between right and wrong.