history repeats itself first as tragedy second as farce meaning
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon This book is the source of one of Marx's most quoted[7] statements, that history repeats itself, "the first as tragedy, then as farce", referring respectively to Napoleon I and to his nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III):
Consequentialism The phrase and concept of "The end justifies the means" are at least as old as the first century BC. Ovid wrote in his Heroides that Exitus acta probat "The result justifies the deed".