Machiavelli — "It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, an…"
It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Machiavelli
"Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to repeat them every day, and thus able to secure men without f…"
"He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command."
"Men are won over as much by the love they are given as by the fear they are inspired with."
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
"It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver."
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.