Machiavelli — "Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
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"Men are more apt to forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony."
"He who desires to rule, must be prepared to use fraud and deceit."
"It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you wish to control her, it is necessary to beat and ill-use her."
"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."
"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."
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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