The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations

by Robert Greene

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities. — NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI Machiavelli calls this “the effective truth,” and it is his most brilliant concept, in my opinion. It works like this: People will say almost anything to justify their actions, to give them a moral or sanctimonious veneer. The only thing that is clear, the only way we can judge people and cut away all this crap is by looking at their actions, the results of their actions. That is their effective truth. Take the Pope, for instance. He will sermonize forever about the poor, about morality, about peace, but in the meantime he presides over the most powerful organization in the world (in Machiavelli’s time). And his actions are basically concerned with increasing this power. The effective truth is that the Pope is a political animal, and that his decisions inevitably involve maintaining the Catholic Church’s preeminent place in the world. The religious verbiage is simply a part of his political gamesmanship, serving as a distracting device.