Machiavelli — "The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditi…"
The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
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More from Machiavelli
"There is no surer way of holding an acquired state than by ruining it."
"Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."
"It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves…"
"The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Alba, and Ostia, did not destroy them, but gave them their own laws and left them free, and they did not hold them without difficulty."
"It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves."
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.