Bill Moyers Quotes

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

Our rulers do wrong from choice and right from necessity.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?

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.

Grub first, then ethics.

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

That moment was very important because it was political. That's what has to be done, so they struck a deal. She figures his is a well-thought-out motivation that she felt was worthy trade-off. The motivation here is survival, and she has to think like a leader.

And erm, perhaps looking like this it was perhaps the only thing I could do.

Even good people are obliged to deceive.

Governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.

You can’t set aside … values in the name of political expediency.

I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.

Governments almost never act with moral clarity and for very good reason. They are dealing with competing interests.

You cannot institute any equality between right and wrong.

The end must justify the means.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

The hardest thing in life is to know when to hold fast to one’s principles and when it is acceptable to bend them.

An ideologue believes that what is right will work. A pragmatist believes that what works is right.

.In politics a man must learn to rise above principle.

As soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And ... the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

I'm sure that everyone has been in a situation in their lives where they've had to change their game plan.

When you cannot have something, you make what you have work.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.