Machiavelli — "Thus it happens in affairs of state, that to try to avoid one trouble often lead…"
Thus it happens in affairs of state, that to try to avoid one trouble often leads to another.
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More from Machiavelli
"For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous."
"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."
"Politics have no relation to morals."
"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."
"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 …"
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.