Machiavelli — "It is better to be a good prophet than a good poet."
It is better to be a good prophet than a good poet.
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
"For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive."
"It is not possible to provide against every inconvenience; but it is necessary to provide against the most important."
"He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command."
"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."
"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."
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.