Stalin’s Law
You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Though frequently credited to the Soviet dictator, as well as to the equally unappetising Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering, either of whom may well have justified the policies of their regimes in this manner, the phrase actually is much older. William Howard Taft used a close variation of it - “We cannot make omelets without breaking eggs” - in a speech during his presidency (1909-13) according to They Never Said It (1989) by Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George.
The rather more radical revolutionary Robespierre, who sought to establish a ‘Reign of Virtue’ by marching all of France’s internal enemies to the guillotine, also is reported to have employed this extenuation. Most likely the phrase is a French proverb.
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