Name: _____________________________

The Prince Overview

Niccoló Machiavelli's The Prince is arguably the most popular book about politics ever written. Its observations about human behavior are as true today as they were five hundred years ago. In this book, Machiavelli offers advice to politicians regarding how to gain power and how to keep it.

Although modern readers think that a "prince" is someone who is destined to inherit control of his country, the princes of Machiavelli's time were by no means that secure: the prince had to be careful to keep the support of his citizens if he wanted to remain in power. The methods that Machiavelli suggests for leaders to keep public support are just as relevant for today's elected officials as they were for leaders of the sixteenth century.

Although The Prince is taught in many schools, there are few reputable teachers who would recommend actually following the advice that Machiavelli offers; it is meant to serve the prince's selfish interests, not to serve society in general. The ideas in the book are stated so harshly and bluntly that the term Machiavellian has now commonly used to describe the process of being cunning and ruthless in the pursuit of power.

Previous political writers, from Plato and Aristotle in ancient times to the sixteenth-century humanists, treated politics as a branch of the area of philosophy that dealt with morals. Machiavelli's chief innovation was to break with this long tradition and present the study of politics as political science.

1. In the actions of men, and especially of Princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means. ___________________________________________________________________

2. To desire to acquire is truly something very natural and ordinary and always, when men do it who can, they will be lauded, or not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here is the error and the blame. ____________________________________________________

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3. A prince must care little for the reputation of being a miser, if he wishes to avoid robbing his subjects, if he wishes to be able to defend himself, to avoid becoming poor and contemptible, and not to be forced to become rapacious. __________________________________________

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4. Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives that he who lets go of what is done for that which one ought to do sooner learns ruin than his own preservation: because a man who might want to make a show of goodness in all things necessarily comes to ruin among so many who are not good. Because of this it is necessary for a prince, wanting to maintain himself, to learn how to be able to be not good and to use this and not use it according to necessity.______________________________________________________________________

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5. Everyone admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word….Therefore a wise lord cannot and should not remain loyal when doing so may be used against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it [loyalness] do not exist anymore.___________________

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