Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.
ATTRIBUTION:
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian political philosopher, statesman. The Prince, ch. 15 (1514).
