"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."

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It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

— Niccolo Machiavelli