Machiavelli — "Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves aga…"
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
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More from Machiavelli
"He who builds on the people, builds on mud."
"Hence it comes that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones have failed."
"God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."
"Men are always averse to new things, and it is very hard to persuade them to change."
"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise."
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.