Machiavelli — "If a prince wants to keep his state, he must learn how to be not good, and to us…"
If a prince wants to keep his state, he must learn how to be not good, and to use or not use this according to the necessity.
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More from Machiavelli
"A prince must have no other object, no other thought, nor take anything else for his art, but war and its orders and discipline."
"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."
"For where the fear of God is wanting, it is inevitable that the kingdom will come to ruin, or that it will be sustained by the fear of a prince, which will supply the want of religion."
"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…"
"God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."
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.