The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria Quotes

“It is the mark of a tyrant, indeed an underhand deception, to treat people at large the way that animal trainers customarily treat a wild beast; for their prime concern is to observe what pacifies it or what arouses it, and they provoke or soothe it to suit their own convenience.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“How fleeting, how brief, how fragile is the life of a man, and how subject to misfortune, assailed already by a multitude of diseases and accidents, buildings which collapse, shipwrecks, earthquakes, lightning! We do not need to add war to our woes, and yet it causes more woe than all the others.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“It is not the office that brings honour to the man, but the man to the office.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“The tyrannical scheme of Dionysius of Syracuse has been justly censured; he passed a great many laws, piling one on top of another, but he is said to have allowed his people to ignore them and in this way to have made everyone beholden to him. That was not making laws, but setting traps.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“What is a mistake in other people is a crime in the prince.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“It is the most deplorable tribute when the succession of an inferior ruler turns his predecessor, who was intolerable while he lived, into someone whose integrity and goodness are sadly missed.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“What a mockery it is to regard as slaves those whom Christ redeemed with the same blood as redeemed you”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“For Xenophon in his Oeconomicus rightly considers, that there is something beyond human nature, something wholly divine, in absolute rule over free and willing subjects.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“What makes a prince a great man, except the consent of his subjects?”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“Not that I would want anyone to be forcibly deprived of his goods, but some system should be operated to prevent the wealth of the many from being allocated to the few.”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

“Although the prince will never make any decision hastily, he will never be more hesitant or more circumspect than in starting a war; other actions have their different disadvantages, but war always brings about the wreck of everything that is good, and the tide of war overflows with everything that is worst; what is more, there is no evil that persists so stubbornly. War breeds war; from a small war a greater is born, from one, two; a war that begins as a game becomes bloody and serious; the plague of war, breaking out in one place, infects neighbours too and, indeed, even those far from the scene.

[. . .]

Certain arts, such as astrology and what is called alchemy, were banned by law because they were too close to fraud and were generally managed by trickery, even if it were possible for a man to practise them honestly. This would be far more justifiable in the case of wars, even if some of them might be just — although with the world in its present state, I am not sure that any of that kind could be found, that is, wars not caused by ambition, anger, arrogance, lust, or greed. It often happens that the leaders of men, more extravagant than their private resources will allow, will take a chance to stir up war in order to boost their own finances, even by pillaging their own people. 'This is sometimes done by princes in collusion with one another, on some trumped-up pretext, in order to weaken the people and to strengthen their own position at the expense of the state. For these reasons the good Christian prince must be suspicious of all wars, however just.

[. . .]

The godly and merciful prince will also be influenced by seeing that the greatest part of all the great evils which every war entails falls on people unconnected with the war, who least deserve to suffer these calamities. When the prince has made his calculations and reckoned up the total of all these woes (if indeed they could ever be reckoned up), then let him say to himself: ‘Shall I alone be the cause of so much woe? Shall so much human blood, so many widows, so many grief-stricken households, so many childless old people, so many made undeservedly poor, the total ruin of morality, law, and religion: shall all this be laid at
my door? Must I atone for all this before Christ?”
― Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria