Machiavelli — "The Roman state was ruined by the ambition of the people as much as by the ambit…"
The Roman state was ruined by the ambition of the people as much as by the ambition of the nobility.
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More from Machiavelli
"It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."
"It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you wish to control her, it is necessary to beat and ill-use her."
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance, whereas if you wound them incurably, they are unable to do so."
"A prince must be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves."
"The nature of men is such that they are much beholden to those who do them good, and they are much offended by those who do them evil."
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.