The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good and faithful judge prefers what is right to what is expedient.
Horace
Experience (has) 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
The end justifies the means.
Proverb
There seems to be a frenzy, a momentum to grab up anything you can. The decisions seem to be dictated by money and political expediency.
Miloon Kothari
Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A virtuous expediency, then, seems the highest desirable or attainable earthly excellence for the mass of men, and is the only earthly excellence that their Creator intended for them.
Herman Melville
Protection is not a principle, but an expedient.
Benjamin Disraeli
Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he? / All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.
Bible
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard Shaw
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
Joshua Reynolds
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.
Henry David Thoreau
You can\'t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
William Somerset Maugham
Cowardice asks: Is it safe? Expediency asks: Is it politic? But Conscience asks: Is it right?
William Punshon
The administration is not paying attention to the laws of biodiversity. It\'s paying far more attention to the laws of political expediency.
Glen Spain