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 to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be, what course will save the life and liberty of the country.
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"Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times."
"Men are more apt to forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony."
"Men are always more easily deceived when they are trying to deceive others."
"A prince must have no other object, no other thought, nor take anything else for his art, but war and its orders and discipline."
"Hatred is acquired as much by good works as by evil."
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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