Machiavelli — "It is not fortune, but their own indolence, that causes men to abandon themselve…"
It is not fortune, but their own indolence, that causes men to abandon themselves to their fate.
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More from Machiavelli
"Politics have no relation to morals."
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."
"He who is not a friend to the new order of things must be an enemy to it."
"It is not reason but necessity that makes men humble."
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.