Key ideas: Written around 1513 as an attempt to gain favor with the Midicci, The Prince is a treatise on how to become an autocrat. Modern readers have called it brutal, calculating, and cynical. However, Machiavelli's innate understanding of human nature and how it can be exploited for personal gain provides lessons that are timeless.
I come now to the last branch of my charge: that I teach princes villainy, and how to enslave. If any man will read over my book … with impartiality and ordinary charity, he will easily perceive that it is not my intention to recommend that government or those men there described to the world, much less to teach men how to trample upon good men, and all that is sacred and venerable upon earth, laws, religion, honesty, and what not. If I have been a little too punctual in describing these monsters in all their lineaments and colours, I hope mankind will know them, the better to avoid them, my treatise being both a satire against them, and a true character of them …
Niccolo Machiavelli,
from a Letter to a Friend.
When an acquired state has been accustomed to living in freedom under its own laws, there are three ways of securing it.
The first is to destroy it;
the second, to move there oneself;
the third, to let it live with its own laws, exacting a tribute and creating within it a regime of a selected few who will keep it friendly toward you.
As the regime of the state has been created by the new prince, it knows it cannot exist without his goodwill and power, and must do everything to maintain him. The best way to keep a city accustomed to living freely is through its citizens....
The memory of former freedom simply will not leave the people in peace. In this case the safest course is for the prince either to destroy them or to go and live there himself.
Men will always follow paths beaten by others, and proceed in their actions by imitation.
Another factor that must be considered is that a populace is always erratic. It is easy enough to win the people over, but difficult to keep their allegiance. Therefore, matters must be arranged in such a way that when the populace no longer believes, a prince can compel them to believe by force.
Everyone knows how commendable it is for a prince to keep his word and live by integrity rather than by cunning. And yet our own era has shown that princes who have little regard for their word have achieved great things, being expert at beguiling men’s minds. In the end, these princes overcame those who relied solely on loyalty.
a wise ruler cannot and should not keep his word when it would be to his disadvantage to do so, and when the reasons that made him give his word have disappeared. If all men were good, this rule would not stand. But as men are wicked and not prepared to keep their word to you, you have no need to keep your word to them.
In order to hold their states securely, some princes disarm their subjects, others keep their conquered territories divided, while still others encourage hostility against themselves.
No new prince has ever disarmed his subjects. In fact, whenever a prince found his new subjects disarmed, he has always armed them, because when he does so those arms become his. The men he did not trust become faithful, those who were faithful remain so, and his subjects become his partisans.
And yet the prince cannot arm all his subjects, so when the ones he does arm receive benefits, he need not worry unduly about the rest: The armed subjects see that they are being preferred and are bound to the prince...
But when you start to disarm them, they take offense. You show that you mistrust them, either out of cowardice or because you have little faith in them, both of which opinions will generate hatred toward you.
The only way for a prince to guard himself from flattering adulation is to make it understood that he will not be offended if he is told the truth. Then again, however, if every man is free to tell him the truth at will, the prince quickly becomes a figure of contempt. Therefore a prudent prince must approach the matter in an altogether different way: For his government, he must choose men who are wise and give them, and nobody else, free rein to speak their minds—but only on matters on which he consults them.
[M]an cannot deviate from that to which nature inclines him.
Moreover, if he has always prospered by walking down a certain path, it will be difficult to persuade him to leave it.
Consequently, when the time comes for a cautious man to act impetuously, he will not be able to do so, and will come to ruin. Even if he could adapt his nature to the times and circumstances, his Fortune would not change.