He who causes another to become powerful is ruined himself; because that power has been effected by him either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised to power.
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"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."
"Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling."
"It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver."
"He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined."
"Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to repeat them every day, and thus able to secure men without f…"
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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