Machiavelli — "It is always necessary to take the lesser evil as good."
It is always necessary to take the lesser evil as good.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Machiavelli
"Therefore a prince, not being able to use this virtue of liberality in such a way that it may be recognized, except to his cost, a wise prince ought not to mind the reputation of being a miser."
"There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you."
"A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and loyal; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, fro…"
"He who is not strong enough to be a fox and a lion at the same time, will be ruined by either."
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
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.