Machiavelli — "Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves aga…"
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
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More from Machiavelli
"If a prince wants to maintain his rule, he must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not, according to need."
"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."
"A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests."
"It is not reason but necessity that makes men humble."
"It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved."
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.