Jonathan

“a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“This leads me to ask how it came to be that Pluto is Mickey’s dog, but Mickey is not Pluto’s mouse. Something is awry in the taxonomic class of mammals in the Disney universe. I”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet

“this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“His addiction to millenarianism, his confidence in visions, his prophetic stridency, his hatred of art, and his mistrust of secular scholarship align him with aspects of the modern world most moderns reject: religious obscurantism, extreme fanaticism, irrational fundamentalism.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492: The Year the Four Corners of the Earth Collided