Machiavelli — "It is a common error among men to believe that the shortest way to conquer a thi…"
It is a common error among men to believe that the shortest way to conquer a thing is to try to obtain it by force.
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"And it is to be noted that in taking a state, the conqueror must arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to repeat them daily, but to be able, by not repeating them, to reassure…"
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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.