For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
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"Therefore a prince, not being able to use this virtue of liberality in such a way that it may be recognized, except to his cost, a wise prince ought not to mind the reputation of being a miser."
"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."
"For where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations whatever of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or disgrace, should be allowed t…"
"Hatred is acquired as much by good works as by evil."
"Thus it happens in affairs of state, that to try to avoid one trouble often leads to another."
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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