The Prince

by Niccolò Machiavelli

It’s easy to convince people of something, but hard to keep them convinced. So when they stop believing in you, you must be in a position to force them to believe.

Let’s settle this question of the nobles. As I see it, they can be divided for the most part into two categories: either they behave in such a way as to tie themselves entirely to your destiny, or they don’t. Those who do tie themselves and aren’t greedy should be honoured and loved; the ones who don’t can be further divided into two groups.

Machiavelli sees people as either useful to himself or not. Morality resolves around himself with no care for any kind of objective good but only what will help his ambitions.

Another thing a ruler must do to exercise his mind is read history, in particular accounts of great leaders and their achievements. He should look at their wartime strategies and study the reasons for their victories and defeats so as to avoid the failures and imitate the successes. Above all he must do what some great men have done in the past: take as model a leader who’s been much praised and admired and keep his example and achievements in mind at all times.

The Catholic version of this is: read the Bible and use the Saints are role models.

Many writers have dreamed up republics and kingdoms that bear no resemblance to experience and never existed in reality; there is such a gap between how people actually live and how they ought to live that anyone who declines to behave as people do, in order to behave as they should, is schooling himself for catastrophe and had better forget personal security: if you always want to play the good man in a world where most people are not good, you’ll end up badly. Hence, if a ruler wants to survive, he’ll have to learn to stop being good, at least when the occasion demands.

These reflections prompt the question: is it better to be loved rather than feared, or vice versa? The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, if you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved.

Men are less worried about letting down someone who has made himself loved than someone who makes himself feared. Love binds when someone recognizes he should be grateful to you, but, since men are a sad lot, gratitude is forgotten the moment it’s inconvenient. Fear means fear of punishment, and that’s something people never forget.

This is psychologically true; the negative influences are stronger than the positive . It should be no surprise that philosophers who disregard an objective morality come to this conclusion because it is practical.

Hence a sensible leader cannot and must not keep his word if by doing so he puts himself at risk, and if the reasons that made him give his word in the first place are no longer valid. If all men were good, this would be bad advice, but since they are a sad lot and won’t be keeping their promises to you, you hardly need to keep yours to them.

So, a leader doesn’t have to possess all the virtuous qualities I’ve mentioned, but it’s absolutely imperative that he seem to possess them.

This is Glaucon's argument in the Republic (Book II) that people are more concerned with appearing just than actually being just. If Machiavellihad the ring of Gyges we know he certainly would do evil with it and recommend people to.

What you have to understand is that a ruler, especially a ruler new to power, can’t always behave in ways that would make people think a man good, because to stay in power he’s frequently obliged to act against loyalty, against charity, against humanity and against religion.