Ah! what could our Family do without the moralist? He has always been our stay, our support, our friend; today he is our only friend. Whenever there has been dark talk of assassination, he has come forward and saved us with his impressive maxim, “Forbear: nothing politically valuable was ever yet achieved by violence.” He probably believes it. It is because he has by him no child’s book of world-history to teach him that his maxim lacks the backing of statistics. All thrones have been established by violence; no regal tyranny has ever been overthrown except by violence; by violence my fathers set up our throne; by murder, treachery, perjury, torture, banishment and prison they have held it for four centuries, and by these same arts I hold it today. There is no Romanoff of learning and experience but would reverse the maxim and say: “Nothing politically valuable was ever yet achieved except by violence.”

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]

Story (1905-02-02), “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” North American Review, Vol. 180, No. 580 (1905-03)
    (Source)

Meant to be the musings of Czar Alexander III, whom Twain detested, about the morality of assassinating people such as himself.