Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and perish finall… - Frederick II of Prussia

Machiavel's The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust. [...] I always have regarded The Prince as one of the most dangerous works which were spread in the world; it is a book which falls naturally into the hands of princes, and of those who have a taste for policy. [...] There is a real injustice in concluding that the rotten apples are representative of all of them.

It is a fact that princes who try to raise other princes with violence, end up destroying themselves.

"It is enough", this malicious man tells us, "to extinguish the line of the defeated prince." Can one read this without quivering in horror and indignation?