Machiavelli — "It is not possible to provide against every inconvenience; but it is necessary t…"
It is not possible to provide against every inconvenience; but it is necessary to provide against the most important.
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More from Machiavelli
"Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times."
"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."
"It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are bad, and that they will use their malignity of mind whenever they have a free opportunity to do so."
"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order…"
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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.