Tao Te Ching

“Those who read what the beginning of Rome was, and what her lawgivers and her organization, will not be astonished that so much virtue would have maintained itself during so many centuries; and that so great an empire should have sprung from it afterwards.”

— Machiavelli 1469 – 1527 CE
(Niccolò Machiavelli)
from Discourses on Livy