Machiavelli — "He who desires to rule, must be prepared to use fraud and deceit."
He who desires to rule, must be prepared to use fraud and deceit.
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More from Machiavelli
"Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them."
"The nature of men is such that they are much beholden to those who do them good, and they are much offended by those who do them evil."
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
"A prince must have no other object, no other thought, nor take anything else for his art, but war and its orders and discipline; for this is the only art that belongs to him who rules."
"All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have a free opportunity to do so."
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.