Niccolò Machiavelli

1469-1527 · Italian (Florentine Republic) · Political Philosophy, Republican Theory, Political History, Military Theory

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512 they disbanded the republic Machiavelli had served for fifteen years, tortured him on suspicion of conspiracy, and sent him to a farm outside the city. From that humiliation he wrote The Prince — a manual so candid that his name became a synonym for political wickedness: a diplomat who had watched Cesare Borgia at close range, arguing that humanists who taught princes to be virtuous had been wrong about power.

Topics Niccolò Machiavelli addresses

• virtù
• fortuna
• necessità
• the prince and republican liberty
• one's own arms
• the anti-mercenary argument
• cruelty well used and badly used
• better to be feared than loved
• the fox and the lion
• learning how not to be good
• appearing virtuous versus being virtuous
• the two humors of the city
• tumults and liberty
• corruption of republics
• the mixed constitution
• civil religion
• Christianity as weakener of nations
• religion as political instrument
• the unarmed prophet
• Cesare Borgia as model
• Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus
• the new modes and orders
• occasione
• the exhortation to liberate Italy

Converse with Niccolò Machiavelli on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Niccolò Machiavelli's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.