Machiavelli — "The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of…"
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
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More from Machiavelli
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
"For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous."
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
"He who causes another to become powerful is ruined himself; because that power has been effected by him either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised …"
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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.