Machiavelli — "For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false…"
For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous.
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More from Machiavelli
"He who blinds himself to reality must prepare to be destroyed."
"God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."
"All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have a free opportunity to do so."
"The promises of men are not to be relied on, unless they are made under such circumstances that the promiser cannot break them without ruin."
"It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves…"
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.