... War is the sole art looked for in one who rules... - Niccolò Machiavelli

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

For this can be said of men in general: that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocrites and dissemblers, avoiders of dangers, greedy for gain; and while you benefit them, they are entirely yours, offering you their blood, their goods, their life, their children,...when need is far away, but when you actually become needy, they turn away. (translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn)

But above all he must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.