Machiavelli — "If a prince wants to keep his state, he must learn how to be not good, and to us…"
If a prince wants to keep his state, he must learn how to be not good, and to use or not use this according to the necessity.
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More from Machiavelli
"There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you."
"Men are generally so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."
"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."
"Men are always averse to new things, and it is very hard to persuade them to change."
"For it can be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, feigners and dissemblers, shirkers of dangers, eager for gain."
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.