Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

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.

The prince must not mind incurring the scandal of those vices without which it would be difficult to save the state.

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

When it becomes serious, you have to lie.

Very rarely do people make big compromises with their integrity. Almost every compromise is a small one that is easily justified. The downhill slide is usually a result of many little compromises.

About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.

Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

It is better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none.

I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.

Evil can do anything, for a price.

Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.

I think that you only occasionally have to play evil because everything you're doing is.

The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.

If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

It is easy to be just when our own inclinations do not oppose it.

Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.

Men must learn now with pity to dispense; For policy sits above conscience.

If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.

Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

Compassion without wisdom is dangerous. It's what enables people to support the 'underdog,' even if the underdog is evil