Niccolò Machiavelli
Wresting politics from morality to look it in the face: by what real springs, up to cunning and force, power is seized, founded and kept.
Italian · 1469 – 1527
A senior official of the Florentine Republic, in charge of its diplomatic and military affairs for fourteen years, he observed power at close range in action, from Cesare Borgia to the courts of France and the Empire. Cast out and imprisoned when the Medici returned in 1512, he wrote in disgrace, on his farm at Sant'Andrea, (1513) and the , breaking with the mirror-of-princes tradition to found a science of politics drawn from Roman history and from experience. A republican by conviction as much as a theorist of princely power, he gave his name to a manner, "Machiavellianism," that often betrays his thought: less a praise of evil than a disenchanted lucidity about the springs of collective action. Long read as the master of tyrants, he is now recognized as the first modern political thinker, claimed by the realist tradition and by republicanism alike.
One must start from the of things, not from imagined republics that have never existed: whoever forsakes what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation.
In politics an action is judged by its results, not by its conformity to moral rules: the prince must learn to be able not to be good, and use it or not according to necessity.
Cruelty is neither good nor evil in itself: well used, done all at once out of necessity and then turned to the subjects' benefit, it secures the state; drawn out over time, it ruins it.
Fortune is mistress of only half our actions: the other half is governed by , which raises dikes against her flood and seizes the occasion with a bold heart.
The prince must know how to be a fox as much as a lion: what governs is not what he is but what everyone sees of him, and he will not keep his word when it turns against him.
A people is free only if it depends on no one's arbitrary power, abroad as at home: this vivere libero is born not of concord but of the ordered conflict between the people and the great.
Justification
His knowledge, he says, is drawn from a long experience of modern things and a continual reading of ancient ones: it is from the observation of cases, diplomatic and historical, that the maxims emerge, not from a priori deduction. An empirical, inductive method applied to human affairs.
The Prince, Dedicatory Letter · Discourses on Livy, Book I, Preface
Justification
Against the fatalism that leaves everything to chance or to God, Machiavelli reserves half the game for man: rules one part of our actions but leaves us to govern the other. is that active part: to raise, while the weather is calm, dikes against the river that will overflow, to seize the occasion, to fit one's manner to the quality of the times. He leans toward boldness, for fortune yields to the daring.
I judge it may be true that fortune is the arbiter of half our actions, but that she still leaves the other half, or nearly so, for us to govern.The Prince, ch. XXV
The Prince, ch. XXV · The Prince, ch. VI (the occasion)
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Justification
The remedy for the present is sought in the past: one must imitate the ancients and keep drawing the body politic back toward its beginnings. This orientation toward memory and the Roman example coexists with a keen sense of the present occasion, which must be seized without delay.
Discourses on Livy, Book I Preface; III.1 · The Prince, ch. XIV (reading histories)
Justification
Against the whole genre of the mirror-of-princes, Machiavelli refuses to depict the city as it ought to be: the gap between how one lives and how one ought to live is such that whoever pursues the ideal comes to grief among so many who are not good. Hence his rule of method: go to the and draw the maxim from cases, from Roman history and experience, not from an imagined republic.
It has seemed to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth.The Prince, ch. XV
The Prince, ch. XV · The Prince, Dedicatory Letter · Discourses on Livy, Book I, Preface
Justification
Machiavelli judges action not by principle but by effect: where there is no judge to appeal to, one looks to the end, and the means that keep the state will be held honorable. The prince must therefore learn to be able not to be good, not from a taste for evil, but because politics, the sphere of necessity, obeys a logic of its own, severed from private morality. The residue of "virtue" that remains is not moral: it is , efficacy and not goodness.
The Prince, chs. XV and XVIII · Discourses on Livy, I.9
Justification
Cruelty is not praised in itself: it is judged by its use. Well used are those inflicted all at once, out of the necessity of securing oneself, and then turned to the greatest benefit of the subjects; badly used, those that grow with time. Injuries are done all together, benefits are meted out slowly; and since love hangs on a bond that men break to their advantage, whereas fear hangs on the dread of punishment, it is safer to be feared than loved, provided one avoids being hated.
The Prince, ch. VIII (Agathocles) · The Prince, ch. VII (Cesare Borgia, Remirro de Orco) · The Prince, ch. XVII (to be feared or loved)
Justification
Since men are wicked and will not keep faith with you, you are not bound to keep yours when it harms you and the reasons that made you promise are spent. The prince must fight as a man by the laws and as a beast by force, and among beasts be a fox to scent snares as much as a lion to frighten off wolves. What then remains is the essential thing: not what he is but what he seems, for few touch the truth while the many stop at appearances.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, but few perceive what you are.The Prince, ch. XVIII
The Prince, ch. XVIII (in what mode faith should be kept by princes)
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Justification
The people, in the , desire one thing only: not to be commanded or oppressed. The liberty they defend is first of all independence from any arbitrary power, abroad as at home. This vivere libero, upheld by mixed government and by laws born of the conflict of the orders, makes Machiavelli a source of the republican tradition of , more than of mere liberty-as-absence-of-interference.
The Prince, ch. IX (the people and the great) · Discourses on Livy, I.4 and I.16
Justification
History has neither providence nor progress: regimes turn in a circle of six forms, each corrupting into the next, and no state escapes decay except by periodically returning to its first principles. This recurrence, compounded by the immense role of , rules out any overall direction: the meaning of history is a return, not an arrow.
Discourses on Livy, I.2 · Discourses on Livy, III.1 (return to first principles)
Justification
Punishment aims at political effect, not desert: the dread of punishment is the surest bond of subjects, and the exemplary execution of Remirro de Orco, left cleft in two on the square at Cesena, leaves the people at once satisfied and stunned. Deterrence and the appeasement of opinion prevail over reparation or reform.
The Prince, ch. VII (Remirro de Orco) · The Prince, ch. XVII (the dread of punishment)
Justification
To found or reform a state one must be alone, wielding a near-absolute authority; but to endure demands the opposite, a mixed government and laws set above men. Machiavelli holds coercive order to be necessary, against all anarchy, while lodging lasting liberty in Roman constitutionalism.
Discourses on Livy, I.9 (the sole founder) · Discourses on Livy, I.2 (mixed government)
Justification
Against the prejudice that despises the crowd, Machiavelli judges the multitude wiser and more constant than a prince when it is ordered by laws, and likens the voice of the people to the voice of God. But to found or save a state falls to one man: his trust in the many stays tempered by the role of the exceptional individual.
Discourses on Livy, I.58 · Discourses on Livy, I.9
Justification
The city is for Machiavelli not a sum of individuals but a body run through with collective forces, the two humors of the people and the great, whose clash produces laws and liberty. The salvation of this body, the fatherland, takes precedence over individual conscience, the prince's as much as the citizen's.
Discourses on Livy, I.4 · The Prince, ch. IX
Justification
No rule holds for all times: success depends on the match between one's manner of acting and the quality of the times, and whoever does not bend his conduct when they change is undone. Practical wisdom prevails over the fixed rule, but in the service of effectiveness, not of equity.
The Prince, ch. XXV
Justification
The state is not born of a pact among consenting equals: it is instituted by the force and the of a founder, then maintained by good laws and good arms. Machiavelli precedes contractualism and does not share its source: legitimacy comes from founding and from effect, not from consent.
Discourses on Livy, I.9 · The Prince, ch. XII (good laws and good arms)
Justification
Whoever founds a republic must presuppose all men wicked, ready to follow their malice as soon as they have free occasion: this is a legislator's postulate, not a metaphysics of the fall. Men are ungrateful, fickle, dissemblers, evaders of danger, greedy for gain. But this evil is not fixed: good laws and the goad of necessity can make them good, which keeps it short of an absolute pessimism.
The Prince, ch. XVII · Discourses on Livy, I.3
Justification
If history instructs present action, it is because human nature does not vary: in every city and people one finds the same desires and the same humors, and it was ever so. The two humors, that of the people and that of the great, run through all societies. Against the idea of a human being wholly shaped by culture, Machiavelli wagers on anthropological constants that make the past worth imitating.
Discourses on Livy, I.39 · Discourses on Livy, I.4 and Book I Preface
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Machiavelli never argues for the existence of God. He treats religion as an instrument of government, Numa's civic role being for Rome as decisive as Romulus's arms, and reproaches Christianity with having made the world weak by glorifying humility and contemplation over civic vigor (, I.11 and II.2). His question is not the truth of religion but its effects on the city.