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Wrote "The Prince". The End Justifies the Means.
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That would be Niccolò Machiavelli. He wrote Il Principe (The Prince) in 1513 (published 1532).
The exact phrase "the end justifies the means" is a later summation of his ideas, not a direct quote from the book. Machiavelli does argue that a ruler must be prepared to set aside conventional morality when necessary to preserve the state — e.g., Chapter XVIII: "a prince must learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to necessity."
His name became the basis for "Machiavellian," and his work is often cited in discussions of consequentialist political ethics.
The exact phrase "the end justifies the means" is a later summation of his ideas, not a direct quote from the book. Machiavelli does argue that a ruler must be prepared to set aside conventional morality when necessary to preserve the state — e.g., Chapter XVIII: "a prince must learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to necessity."
His name became the basis for "Machiavellian," and his work is often cited in discussions of consequentialist political ethics.
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