Machiavelli — "It is a common error among men to believe that the shortest way to conquer a thi…"
It is a common error among men to believe that the shortest way to conquer a thing is to try to obtain it by force.
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More from Machiavelli
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance, whereas if you wound them incurably, they are unable to do so."
"One change always leaves the way open for the introduction of another."
"The vulgar are always taken by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the vulgar."
"The people, when they are not restrained by fear, are always ready to commit every kind of excess."
"The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar."
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.