Machiavelli — "Men are always more easily deceived when they are trying to deceive others."
Men are always more easily deceived when they are trying to deceive others.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Machiavelli
"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
"For it can be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, feigners and dissemblers, shirkers of dangers, eager for gain."
"One ought never to allow disorders to take their course for the sake of avoiding war, for war is not thereby avoided, but only deferred to your disadvantage."
"In every city these two opposite parties are to be found, arising from the desire of the people to be not oppressed, and the desire of the nobles to oppress."
"It is much more difficult to injure one who is loved than one who is hated."
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.