Machiavelli — "Men are always averse to new things, and it is very hard to persuade them to cha…"
Men are always averse to new things, and it is very hard to persuade them to change.
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More from Machiavelli
"All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have a free opportunity to do so."
"There are three kinds of intellects: one understands things by itself, the other discerns what others understand, and the third understands neither by itself nor through others. The first is excellent…"
"The promises of men are not to be relied on, unless they are made under such circumstances that the promiser cannot break them without ruin."
"Hence it comes that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones have failed."
"Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."
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.