Machiavelli — "For there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers than by letting me…"
For there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers than by letting men understand that to tell you the truth will not offend you.
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More from Machiavelli
"It is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case."
"The people, when they are not restrained by fear, are always ready to commit every kind of excess."
"It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves."
"The vulgar are always taken by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the vulgar."
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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.