Status Updates From The Discourses

Machiavelli understood high pressure sales (and diplomatic) tactics:

“When one desires to obtain a thing from another individual, if the opportunity allows he ought not to give him space to deliberate, and ought to act so that he sees the necessity of a quick decision, which is when he who is asked sees that from refusing or delaying arises a sudden dangerous indignation.”

“Here it is to be considered with this true example how much more a humane act full of charity is sometimes able to do in the spirits of men than a ferocious and violent act, and that often those provinces that arms, warlike instruments, and every other human force have not been able to open have been opened by one example of humanity and of mercy.”

I’m on chapter 4 of The Discourses and while I have negative interest in politics, this book is surprisingly hard to put down. Explores a lot of human psychology when power is involved. A quick trip down history lane too

“Hence it arises that a republic has greater life and good fortune longer than a principality, for it can accommodate itself better than one prince can to the diversity of the times through the diversity of the citizens that are in it. For a man who is accustomed to proceed in one mode never changes…and when the times change not in conformity with his mode, he is ruined. [] Two things are causes why we are unable