![]() "The best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses, they will not save you if you are hated by the people." "Whoever believes that great advancement and new benefits make men forget old injuries is mistaken." "It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles." "The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." Borgia died a few years after the death of his father at the young age of 32.ĭespite Borgia’s premature demise, Machiavelli believed that a strong leader like Borgia was just what Florence needed to raise morale, unite the people and raise the city state’s prominence to its former glory. Ultimately, even Borgia would succumb to ill fortune when his father, Pope Alexander VI, became ill and died. ![]() During a visit with Borgia to discuss relations with Florence, Machiavelli witnessed as Borgia lured his enemies to the city of Senigallia with gifts and promises of friendship and then had them all assassinated. One of the real-life models Machiavelli took inspiration from when writing The Prince was Cesare Borgia, a crude, brutal and cunning prince of the Papal States whom Machiavelli had observed first-hand. This way, “fortune favors the brave.” Cesare Borgia An effective leader, Machiavelli wrote, maximizes virtù and minimizes the role of fortune. Fortune, he wrote, was like a “violent river” that can flood and destroy the earth, but when it is quiet, leaders can use their free will to prepare for and conquer the rough river of fate. ![]() Virtù (not virtue) meant bravery, power and the ability to impose one’s own will. As Machiavelli saw it, there were two main variables in life: fortune and virtù. ![]() Fortune and Virtùįinally, leaders must not rely on luck, Machiavelli wrote, but should shape their own fortune, through charisma, cunning and force. “A prince must always seem to be very moral, even if he is not,” he wrote. Moreover, Machiavelli also believed that when leaders are not moral, it’s important they pretend they are to keep up appearances. Machiavelli shed that notion, saying frankly, “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot have both.”Ĭruelty can be better than kindness, he argued, explaining that “Making an example of one or two offenders is kinder than being too compassionate, and allowing disorders to develop into murder and chaos which affects the whole community.” Keeping one’s word can also be dangerous, he said, since “experience shows that those who do not keep their word get the better of those who do.” Until Machiavelli’s writing, most philosophers of politics had defined a good leader as humble, moral and honest. “The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore, if a prince wants to maintain his rule he must be prepared not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not according to need.” Unlike the noble princes portrayed in fairy tales, a successful ruler of a principality, as described in Machiavelli’s writings, is brutal, calculating and, when necessary, utterly immoral.īecause people are “quick to change their nature when they imagine they can improve their lot,” he wrote, a leader must also be shrewd. In 1513, after being expelled from political service with the takeover of Florence by the Medici family, Machiavelli penned his outline of what makes an effective leader in The Prince. There were constant power struggles at the time between the city-states of Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, France and Spain.Īs leaders rapidly rose and fell, Machiavelli observed traits that, he believed, bolstered power and influence. Machiavelli’s guide to power was revolutionary in that it described how powerful people succeeded-as he saw it-rather than as one imagined a leader should operate.īefore his exile, Machiavelli had navigated the volatile political environment of 16th-century Italy as a statesman. It was his hope that a strong sovereign, as outlined in his writing, could return Florence to its former glory. Rather, when Machiavelli wrote The Prince, his shrewd guidelines to power in the 16th century, he was an exiled statesman angling for a post in the Florentine government. Tony Soprano and Shakespeare’s Macbeth may be well-known Machiavellian characters, but the man whose name inspired the term, Niccolo Machiavelli, didn’t operate by his own cynical rule book. According to Machiavelli, the ends always justify the means-no matter how cruel, calculating or immoral those means might be.
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