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Quote by Egon Bahr

“International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It's about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what you are told in history lessons.”

Quote by Egon Bahr

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Egon Bahr

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“Machiavelli’s teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike. Charles V. offered 5000 crowns for the murder of an enemy. Ferdinand I. and Ferdinand II., Henry III. and Louis XIII., each caused his most powerful subject to be treacherously despatched. Elizabeth and Mary Stuart tried to do the same to each other. The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.”

PoliticsMachiavelliRealpolitikMachiavellianism
Book:The History of Freedom and Other Essays
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“Ferdinando [King of Naples] resolv’d, in good Earnest, to try how to compromise the Affair of the Castles; being persuaded, that that when this Obstacle was remov'd, Matters would easily return into the fame peaceable Channel. But by removing the Causes, the Effects that sprung from them are not always remov'd. For, as it frequently happens, that Resolutions taken out of Fear seldom appear sufficient to the Fearful.”

FearRivalryRealpolitik
Book:The History of Italy
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