The ends justify the means.

Although commonly attributed to Ovid, the exact English maxim “The ends justify the means” is not securely traceable to his surviving works in that form. The idea expresses a consequentialist rationale: morally questionable actions may be excused if they achieve a sufficiently valuable outcome. In later political and ethical debate it is often invoked (sometimes critically) to describe expedient reasoning that subordinates moral constraints to results. Because the attribution to Ovid is doubtful without a specific Latin locus, it is best treated as a later paraphrase or a misattribution rather than a verifiable Ovidian quotation.