Machiavelli — "It is much safer to be feared than loved."
It is much safer to be feared than loved.
It is much safer to be feared than loved.
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"It is much more difficult to injure one who is loved than one who is hated."
"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him."
"Hence it comes that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones have failed."
"He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that power has been effected either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised to powe…"
"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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