Machiavelli — "All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have…"
All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have a free opportunity to do so.
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More from Machiavelli
"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 …"
"To conquer, one must have the spirit of a lion and the cunning of a fox."
"For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous."
"For it can be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, feigners and dissemblers, shirkers of dangers, eager for gain."
"He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that power has been effected either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised to powe…"
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.