Explore "Discourses on Livy" by Niccolò Machiavelli on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Of the accidents which led in Rome to the creation of tribunes of the people; whereby the Republic was made more perfect.
They who lay the foundations of a state and furnish it with laws must, as is shown by all who have treated of civil government, and by examples of which history is full, assume that all men are bad, and will always, when they have free field, give loose to their evil inclinations; and that if these for a while remain hidden, it is owing to some secret cause, which, from our having no contrary experience, we do not recognize at once, but which is afterwards revealed by Time, of whom we speak as the father of all truth.