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 fear and to win them over by benefits.
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"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."
"He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that power has been effected either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised to powe…"
"It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved."
"Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."
"I say that there are three kinds of brains: one that understands things by itself, one that can appreciate what others understand, and one that understands neither by itself nor through others."
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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