Machiavelli — "A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his …"
A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
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More from Machiavelli
"A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves."
"He who is not a friend to the new order of things must be an enemy to it."
"He who is not strong enough to be a fox and a lion at the same time, will be ruined by either."
"It is not possible to provide against every inconvenience; but it is necessary to provide against the most important."
"It is much safer to be feared than loved."
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.