...it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real

truth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have

pictured republics and principalities which in fact have

never been seen and known, because how one lives is so far

distant from how one ought to live...
--Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

To know the worst is not always to be liberated from its

consequences; nevertheless it is preferable to ignorance.
--Isiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli"