In every city these two opposite parties are to be found, arising from the desire of the people to be not oppressed, and the desire of the nobles to oppress.
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"One ought never to allow disorders to take their course for the sake of avoiding war, for war is not thereby avoided, but only deferred to your disadvantage."
"The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Alba, and Ostia, did not destroy them, but gave them their own laws and left them free, and they did not hold them without difficulty."
"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise."
"To conquer, one must have the spirit of a lion and the cunning of a fox."
"He who desires to rule, must be prepared to use fraud and deceit."
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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