Machiavelli — "A prince must be a fox, to know how to avoid snares; and a lion, to terrify wolv…"
A prince must be a fox, to know how to avoid snares; and a lion, to terrify wolves.
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More from Machiavelli
"He who conquers a province in a foreign country, and does not establish his residence there, is in great danger of losing it."
"The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Alba, and Ostia, did not destroy them, but gave them their own laws and left them free, and they did not hold them without difficulty."
"In the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means."
"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 necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case."
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.