Machiavelli — "He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined."
He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined.
He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined.
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"A man who is used to acting in one way, cannot change; because he cannot, he is ruined."
"Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception."
"Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them."
"It is always necessary to take the lesser evil as good."
"Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times."
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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