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.
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
"A man who is used to acting in one way, cannot change; because he cannot, he is ruined."
"He who builds on the people, builds on mud."
"It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver."
"No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution."
"A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands."
Florentine diplomat and political theorist whose The Prince (written 1513) became the founding text of political realism and gave us the adjective 'Machiavellian.' Closely associated with Francesco Guicciardini (fellow Florentine political analyst and historian). For an intellectual contrast, see Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch humanist and The Education of a Christian Prince author (1516) — Erasmus's princely-instruction manual was published three years after Machiavelli's, for the same European audience, and is the explicit Christian-virtue alternative to Machiavellian power-realism. The cleanest 'realism vs idealism' founding pairing in modern political theory.
Your cart is empty
