What is the meaning of the following quote and what is an issue it applies to today?

Question

"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun" Al Capone

Answer 1

Oh it's just a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that occasionally playing rough gets you further in life than always being nice - something people who play rough would say to each other as a sort of "club justification" for playing rough.

It applies in all things - you're bidding a job and a competitor pops up and threatens to take the contract, so you threaten him and he goes away.  Get's you farther to get that contract, presumably, if the other guy doesn't turn you in, or kill you, but then you have to live with being that kind of player, which cuts into your self-respect, which cuts into your ability to love, which cuts into your level of happiness - so I'd say it's a toss-up on whether you end up "further ahead" really, since you're trading away happiness for money.  That's like drugs - how much is enough?  And once you start it, the drugs themselves start to deaden the very receptors that make the drugs feel good - so you end up having to take them just to maintain, but the high is long gone.  Same with trading happiness for money - eventually you no longer care about money - or anything else -

So it applies today - but I'm not sure it's true today - or ever was.

Answer 2

You can live a happy life, with no sins,

But its more likely to live a happy yet at times have a bad times life.