Machiavelli — "Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge …"
Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.
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More from Machiavelli
"It is not fortune, but their own indolence, that causes men to abandon themselves to their fate."
"The end justifies the means."
"Men are always averse to new things, and it is very hard to persuade them to change."
"If a prince wants to maintain his rule, he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not, according to need."
"Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling."
About Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Florentine diplomat and political theorist whose The Prince (written 1513) became the founding text of political realism and gave us the adjective 'Machiavellian.' Closely associated with Francesco Guicciardini (fellow Florentine political analyst and historian). For an intellectual contrast, see Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch humanist and The Education of a Christian Prince author (1516) — Erasmus's princely-instruction manual was published three years after Machiavelli's, for the same European audience, and is the explicit Christian-virtue alternative to Machiavellian power-realism. The cleanest 'realism vs idealism' founding pairing in modern political theory.
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