Expediency Quotes

“Good. Illegal is always faster.”
― Eoin Colfer

“If practicality and morality are polarized and you must choose, you must do what you think is right, rather than what you think is practical.”
― Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

“Experience has taught me," said Peter (...) "that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the 'bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.”
― Alexander Pope, The Rape of Locke and Other Poems

“Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her 'greatness' (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“As the pace of the campaign quickened, politics began to clash with Kennedy's innate sense of responsibility. – Arthur Schlesinger”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“a distinction has gradually sprung up between what is expedient and what is right. But the implication that something can be right without being expedient, or expedient without being right, is the most pernicious error that could possibly be introduced into human life.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties

“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts

“Sacrificing ethics at the altar of expediency is a tragic but time-honoured ritual.”
― R. N. Prasher

“With mounting excitement in his heart he called over the astrologers secretly and instructed them: 'See to it you find an early date for my departure and inform Arya Shukanasa and my father accordingly.' They replied, 'Deva, according to the configuration of your planets, it is not advisable at present for you to undertake any journey. But if the work is urgent then the time that the king decides upon becomes indeed the right time, for all work. There is really no need to look for an auspicious date now.' Chandrapida replied, 'I spoke to you because my father wished for this. For one involved in the fulfilment of unavoidable and pressing duties that come up every moment how can you fix an auspicious date and hour? So please announce that I can leave as early as tomorrow itself."

Within a short time the astrologers came back and informed him softly, 'We have carried out Deva's commands thanks to Shukanasa's distracted state of mind, anxious about his son. Let the day be over tomorrow, you can leave at nightfall.' Pleased, Chandrapida thanked them warmly and rewarded them for their labours.”
― Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Kadambari