Machiavelli — "For a man who wishes to make a profession of good in everything must necessarily…"
For a man who wishes to make a profession of good in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good.
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"A wise prince, therefore, ought to find a means by which his subjects will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then they will always be faithful to him…"
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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.