If you get to learn something even from the worst of creatures don’t hesitate.” -Chanakya. One of the most famous primers on realpolitik was written by a wannabe courtier in involuntary retirement. It did not win Niccolo Machiavelli his summons back to the charmed circle, but his suggestions, written like aphorisms, in then modern and colloquial Italian rather than the formal Latin, persist in the popular imagination to this day.