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The Prince

Niccolò Machiavelli

Book Overview: 

ll Principe (The Prince) is a political treatise by the Florentine writer Niccolò Machiavelli, originally called “De Principatibus” (About Principalities). The descriptions within The Prince have the general theme of accepting that ends of princes, such as glory, and indeed survival, can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends. The treatise is not actually representative of his published work during his lifetime, but it is certainly the best remembered one.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.

There are, for example, the Spartans and the Romans. The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, establishing there an oligarchy, nevertheless they lost them. The Romans, in order to hold Capua, Carthage, and Numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. They wished to hold Greece as the Spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. So to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedo. . . Read More

Community Reviews

I'm weirdly pleased that The Prince lives up to its reputation: it is indeed Machiavellian. Here's his advice on conquering self-governing states (i.e. democracies): "The only way to hold on to such a state is to reduce it to rubble." Well then.

I'd like to say that any guy whose last name becomes a

Italy in the early 1500's was a sad, dispirited land of constant wars, deaths, destruction, political betrayals, schemes of conquest by greedy aristocrats, trying to enlarge their petty Italian states, invasion by ruthless, foreign troops, from France, Spain, the Swiss, rulers being overthrown and k

أعطيتُ الكتاب 3 نجوم لكثيرٍ من الأسباب
فمع إختلافي مع غالبية آراءه إلا أنني أرى ميكافيللي رجلاً شديد الذكاء ويحب وطنه إيطاليا بطريقته الخاصة
كما أنه يسمِّي الأشياء بمسمياتها وهذا ما يجعله شريفا في نظري

أتفق مع ميكافيللي في رؤيته للحياة والبشر فهو "وكما جاء في مقدمة الكتاب" كان يقول أحياناًإنه لم يكن

I don't know how come I never reviewed this one but recently I was visiting this friend of mine in south India, Pramod (yes, the one from Goodreads), when he showed me this not-so-popular smaller piece, allegedly written by the author in his last days, 'Le Gente' and never published - for common peo

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