A prudent man should always follow in the path of great men and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.
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"It is much more difficult to injure one who is loved than one who is hated."
"God does not want to do everything, so as not to deprive us of our free will and part of the glory that belongs to us."
"The common people are always caught by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the common people."
"For it must be noted that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge slight injuries, but not severe ones; hence the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such…"
"For where the fear of God is wanting, it is inevitable that the kingdom will come to ruin, or that it will be sustained by the fear of a prince, which will supply the want of religion."
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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