Machiavelli — "It is better to be a good prophet than a good poet."
It is better to be a good prophet than a good poet.
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More from Machiavelli
"Politics have no relation to morals."
"The common people are always caught by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the common people."
"A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves."
"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."
"The end justifies the means."
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.