Machiavelli — "The end justifies the means."
The end justifies the means.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Machiavelli
"It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver."
"For a man who wishes to make a profession of good in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good."
"It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you wish to control her, it is necessary to beat and ill-use her."
"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."
"For it can be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, feigners and dissemblers, shirkers of dangers, eager for gain."
About Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Florentine diplomat and political theorist whose The Prince (written 1513) became the founding text of political realism and gave us the adjective 'Machiavellian.' Closely associated with Francesco Guicciardini (fellow Florentine political analyst and historian). For an intellectual contrast, see Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch humanist and The Education of a Christian Prince author (1516) — Erasmus's princely-instruction manual was published three years after Machiavelli's, for the same European audience, and is the explicit Christian-virtue alternative to Machiavellian power-realism. The cleanest 'realism vs idealism' founding pairing in modern political theory.