Machiavelli — "It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves."
It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves.
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More from Machiavelli
"He who conquers a province in a foreign country, and does not establish his residence there, is in great danger of losing it."
"He who blinds himself to reality must prepare to be destroyed."
"The common people are always caught by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the common people."
"Politics have no relation to morals."
"No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution."
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.