Machiavelli — "It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves."
It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves.
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More from Machiavelli
"Men are so simple and yield so readily to the necessities of the moment that he who deceives will always find someone who will let himself be deceived."
"Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot."
"For it must be noted that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge slight injuries, but not severe ones; hence the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such…"
"A prince must have no other object, no other thought, nor take anything else for his art, but war and its orders and discipline; for this is the only art that belongs to him who rules."
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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.