AJ

“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo, The Prince

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure. This it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that everyone can see them, there is no longer a remedy.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli