This chapter attempts to clarify Machiavelli's position on the means-end relationship and the relationship between politics and morality. In particular, it examines the originality and uniqueness of Machiavelli's views in relation to past and present political and ethical thought, and argue that, despite their notoriety, his ideas and their attendant problems are a common feature both of political thought and practice and also of personal and political life. An effective political morality must be one designed for human beings as they are, in the circumstances they find themselves in, in order to create a situation where human beings will be fit for morality. But, broadly speaking, the legacy of Machiavelli is the contrast not between the political and the moral but between consequentialist ethics and all other forms. At certain political conjunctions there can be no ethical neutrality in decision-making - 'all roads lead to the mire'.