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.
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"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."
"It is better to be a good prophet than a good poet."
"Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot."
"For of men it may generally be affirmed that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are entirely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their…"
"Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception."
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.
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