Sublime

Machiavel l’avait noté, la chance sourit aux gens emportés : « Je pense qu’il vaut mieux être impétueux que circonspect ; car la fortune est femme : pour la tenir soumise, il faut la traiter avec rudesse ; elle cède plutôt aux hommes qui usent de violence qu’à ceux qui agissent froidement : aussi est-elle toujours amie des jeunes gens, qui sont moi

Marsiglio, on the contrary, still aims at preserving the unity of the Catholic faith, but wishes this to be done by democratic means, not by the papal absolutism. In practice, most Protestants, when they acquired the government, merely substituted the King for the Pope, and thus secured neither liberty of private judgement nor a democratic method o

Any discussion of power would be incomplete without acknowledging Lord Acton's immortal law: Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That unalterable rule applies both to God and man.

As the great Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”

It is important not to confound stability with force, or the greatness of a thing with its duration. In democratic republics, the power which directs *e society is not stable;

Borgia subsequently launched a plan to carve out his own principality in the politically tumultuous Romagna region that stretched east of Florence to the Adriatic coast. These lands were supposed to be under his father, the pope, but the towns were controlled by their own independent princes, little tyrants, and vicars. Their violent rivalries regu

Deve o príncipe, não obstante, fazer-se temer de forma que, se não conquistar o amor, fuja ao ódio, mesmo porque podem muito bem coexistir o ser temido e o não ser odiado:

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Marsiglio of Padua (1270-1342), on the contrary, inaugurated the new form of opposition to the Pope, in which the Emperor has mainly a role of decorative dignity.