Philosophy
Machiavelli: it's safer for a ruler to be feared than loved
Love depends on other people's goodwill, Machiavelli wrote, and goodwill is fickle — it breaks the moment it's inconvenient. Fear depends only on the ruler's own power to punish, so it never fails. His actual advice was narrower than the slogan suggests: be feared, yes, but never hated, since hatred is what gets rulers overthrown.