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Quotation from The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
“as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure”
The Prince, Chapter III, trans. W. K. Marriott (1908)
Machiavelli borrows a medical commonplace about consumptive fever to argue that political troubles must be foreseen and treated early; he returns to the image in Chapter XIII.
Citation: "as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure" — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter III, trans. W. K. Marriott (1908). (id the-prince-q2)
Portrait: Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, Santi di Tito, Public domain.
