Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles if it will help them get a short-term win.
"It's a game of reactions, speed and quick planning based upon principles of fairness – or of the protagonist overwhelming the odds.
But, she was quick to add, the principle is "less important, I think, than U.S. practice and U.S. policy".
Even if the Army of the Republic favors quick, clean strikes in principle, it spends a lot of time hashing over issues in the blowhard language of overkill.
And religious organisations, so quick to advocate the principle of "non-discrimination" in other goods and services, must surely now recognise that only by ending institutional discrimination in schools will we begin to bring about a reduction in the communal enmity and violence that is bred by segregation.
European leaders, including former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, were quick to defend the principle of free movement throughout the community, but the euro-sceptic, or populist, parties that had been gaining strength in many EU countries took the Swiss vote as a sign that their message would resonate with voters [35].
As the Red Cross has pointed out, governments aren't quick to accept the principle of equality enshrined in international humanitarian law, which treats transnational criminal networks as equal in status to the governments fighting them.
Like Abigail Adams, a proto-feminist, who urged her husband to "remember the ladies," she has her principles and is quick to remind her husband of them.
Liberals scorn Scalia as a show-off and intellectual bully who is quick to betray his constitutional principles when they clash with his fervent beliefs as a crusader in the culture wars.
The means, he hastens to point out, were a decidedly mixed bag of motives and techniques that embraced "daring, cunning, bullying, bluff and bluster, treachery, robbery, quick talk, double talk, noble principles, stubborn resolve, low-down expediency, cash on the barrelhead, and, when deemed necessary, spilled blood".
