ONI Interrogator: Tell me about the children. Dr. Halsey?
Dr. Catherine Halsey: You already know everything.
Interrogator: You kidnapped them.
Halsey: Children's minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination, their bodies more adaptable to augmentation. The result was the ultimate soldier. And because of our success, when the Covenant invaded, we were ready.
Interrogator: Dr. Halsey, you're bending history for your favor and you know it. You developed the Spartans to crush human rebellion, not to fight the Covenant.
Halsey: When one human world after another fell... When my Spartans were all that stood between humanity and extinction... Nobody was concerned over why they were originally built.
Interrogator: So you feel in the end that your choices were justified.
Halsey: My work saved the human race.
Dr. Catherine Halsey: You already know everything.
Interrogator: You kidnapped them.
Halsey: Children's minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination, their bodies more adaptable to augmentation. The result was the ultimate soldier. And because of our success, when the Covenant invaded, we were ready.
Interrogator: Dr. Halsey, you're bending history for your favor and you know it. You developed the Spartans to crush human rebellion, not to fight the Covenant.
Halsey: When one human world after another fell... When my Spartans were all that stood between humanity and extinction... Nobody was concerned over why they were originally built.
Interrogator: So you feel in the end that your choices were justified.
Halsey: My work saved the human race.
— Halo 4
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
... he who has been victorious in a great state enterprise is frequently with the King; he who has been defeated is only with him very rarely; and so when one is in the case of doing a state enterprise, one should rather consider whether or not it will be successful than if it can please or displease the king.
— Niccolò Machiavelli "About the French", Discourses on Livy.
Good things usually happen. Bad things sometimes happen. The fact that that would-be widow came in just in time to sob all over your soft, mushy heart and the fact that her husband's gonna live does not change whether or not I did the right thing.
— Dr. Gregory House, House
Fortunately, [Nelson] Mandela was able to win without stepping over millions of corpses. But he knowingly took this risk – and repeatedly pushed his luck. He turned down a long list of reasonable compromises, hoping that the ruling regime would submit to his ultimatum: “One man, one vote – or civil war.” He romanticized violence to gain leverage, but never worried that this romance would turn ugly. Does the fact that Mandela won his game of Russian roulette make his reckless tactics any more excusable?
— Bryan Caplan, 'Mandela: Reckless But Lucky'
