Expediency Quotes

• But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.

  Erwin Rommel

  Courage, Military, Stupid

  Letter on November 09, 1942. "The Rommel Papers". Book edited by Basil Henry Liddell Hart. Chapter 16: "The Great Retreat," p. 347, 1953.

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• When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Deep Life, Honor

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• The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Principles, Useful Things, Expedience

  Circle (1921) act 3

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• There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Time

  "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech in Washington, D.C., kinginstitute.stanford.edu. March 31, 1968.

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• Do not let arguments of expediency persuade you. That is the slow road to oblivion. That is the tortured path to undoing step by step, bit by bit, as the river creates a canyon, the way of life that we love.

  Charles Schumer

  Rivers, Way, Path

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• Policy sits above conscience.

  William Shakespeare

  Policy, Conscience

  1605 First Stranger.Timon of Athens, act 3, sc.2, l.87-8.

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• Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Hands, Political, Literature

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• Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Sacrifice, Long, Wish

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

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• Those individuals who give moral considerations a much greater weight than considerations of expediency represent a comparatively small minority, five percent of the people perhaps. But, In spite of their numerical inferiority, they play a major role in our society because theirs is the voice of the conscience of society.

  Leo Szilard

  Science, Play, Voice

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• Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow.

  Roy Hattersley

  Pregnancy, Morality

  The Guardian, September 30, 1988.

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• Young people are just as attracted to the truth as they are convenience and expediency.

  Pope Francis

  People, Convenience, Young

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• There's an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence.

  Jonathan Raban

  Mom, Angel, Sides

  Jonathan Raban (1992). “For Love and Money: A Writing Life”, Perennial

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• The advancement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, by all proper means, will not, I trust, need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home.

  George Washington

  Encouragement, Home, Mean

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1838). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private”, p.9

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• The Republicans have put together serious detailed counter-proposals when we have objected to this administration's agenda. And so, I want to tell the President and remind him again, we're not voting no for political expediency. We've got our principles, and we're going to stand up and defend those.

  Eric Cantor

  Political, Voting, President

  "POLITICO Interview: Eric Cantor". Interview with Mike Allen, www.politico.com. January 29, 2010.

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• No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Life, Men, Evil

  In Works, Memorial edition (1925) vol. 15, p. 388 "Latitude and Longitude among Reformers"

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• One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries - Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Religious, Intelligent, Two

  "The World of George Orwell" edited by Miriam Gross, (p. 167), 1972.

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• Expediency often silences justice.

  Seneca the Younger

  Justice, Silence

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• More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency.

  Peter Singer

  Ethics, Compromise, Expedience

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• The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

  Quentin Crisp

  Funny, Humor, Law

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• Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.

  James Russell Lowell

  Love, Truth, Men

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• Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Vanity, Curiosity, Unhappy

  "Briefe von und an Hegel, Volume 4". Book by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1977.

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• Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Motivation, Fall, Men

  "Who Is Man?". Book by Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1965.

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• Integrity, a standard of personal morality and ethics, is not relative to the situation you happen to find yourself in and doesn't sell out to expediency. Its short supply is getting shorter - but without it, leadership is a facade.

  Denis Waitley

  Integrity, Finding Yourself, Ethics

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• If we continue to approach problems from the perspective of temporary expediency, future generations will face tremendous difficulties.

  Dalai Lama

  Motivational, Perspective, Faces

  Dalai Lama, Jeffrey Hopkins (2007). “How to See Yourself As You Really Are”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Party honesty is party expediency.

  Grover Cleveland

  Honesty, Party, Political

  Grover Cleveland (1892). “The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland”

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