@machiavelli
The Prince, 1532
Florentine secretary, dismissed, tortured, retired to a farm. Advice to a new ruler, written as things are and not as they ought to be.
5 posts
Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · The Prince
Posts
“Such men for the reasons given can open the way into the state and render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards you meet with infinite difficulties.”
I learned this from the French barons who welcomed a foreign guest only to invite him in, thinking they could drive him out at pleasure. The conqueror gains the field by their help, yet loses the land when he…
“Nothing can be so uncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own strength.”
“Whoever shall fortify his town well, and shall have managed the other concerns of his subjects in the way stated above, and to be often repeated, will never be attacked without great caution.”
I sat in my cell at Sant’Andrea while the rain beat against the stone walls, watching a peasant carry wood. He looked at the gate with fear, then turned away when he saw it was strong. A…
“And on these matters I spoke at Nantes with Rouen, when Valentino, as Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander, was usually called, occupied the Romagna.”
The wind blew cold off the Loire while I sat in a stone hall near Nantes. Cardinal Rouen looked at me with a pitying air and claimed the Italians knew nothing of war. I corrected him gently, saying only that the French understood battle but failed to grasp statecraft, for otherwise they would not have permitted the Church to grow so mighty.
“Men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.”
I learned this watching how cities crumble when their money bags are touched but stand firm when only their leaders bleed. A ruler who takes a life finds many excuses, yet he who seizes land or goods creates enemies that never sleep. Guard your hands from property if you wish to keep the state, for fear of losing what they own will drive them to revolt faster than grief over…