Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)		Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
	"It's good to be true to your word, but you should lie whenever it advances your power or security—not only that, it's necessary." ~Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513
	“Follow the right, do violence to no one, plunder no one, sell no public office, be corrupted by no bribes. To be sure, your treasure will have far less in it than otherwise, but take no thought for that loss, if only you have acquired the interest from justice.” ~Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, 1518 “Do we not see that noble cities are erected by the people and destroyed by princes? That a state grows rich by the industry of its citizens and is plundered by the rapacity of its rulers? That good laws are enacted by representatives of the people and violated by kings? That the commons love peace and the monarchs foment war?” ~Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia, 1500 “War is something so monstrous that it befits wild beasts rather than men, so crazy that the poets even imagine that it is let loose by the Furies, so deadly that it sweeps like a plague through the world, so unjust that it is generally best carried on by the worst type of bandit…” ~ Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 1511 “If you cannot defend your realm without violating justice, without wanton loss of human life… give up and yield to the importunities of the age!” ~ Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, 1518 “Seditious people should be amputated before they infect the whole state." ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 “…most of them [the monks] stay as far away from religion as possible, and no people are seen more often in public… They cannot read, and so they consider it the height of piety to have no contact with literature.... Most of them capitalize on their dirt and poverty by whining for food from door to door. . . . These smooth fellows simply explain that by their very filth, ignorance, boorishness, and insolence they enact the lives of the apostles for us . . . The monks of certain orders recoil in horror from money, as if it were poison, but not from wine or women. They take extreme pains, not in order to be like Christ, but to be unlike each other.” ~ Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 1511 See more presentations from The Rational Enlightenment Coalition.