People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they c… - Niccolò Machiavelli

But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you.

One can say this in general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of profit...Love is a bond of obligation that these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them to do so; but fear holds them fast by a dread of punishment that never passes.

...against my will, my fate,
A throne unsettled, and an infant state,
Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs, And guard with these severities my shores.