Machiavelli — "If a prince wants to maintain his rule, he must learn how not to be virtuous, an…"
If a prince wants to maintain his rule, he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not, according to need.
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More from Machiavelli
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
"He who desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with the assumption that all men are bad, and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it."
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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.