Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Machiavelli

The Prince

"Men almost always walk in paths beaten by others and act by imitation. Though he cannot hold strictly to the ways of others or match the ability of those he imitates, a prudent man must always tread the path of great men and imitate those who have excelled, so that even if his ability does not match theirs, at least he will achieve some semblance of it.

I say, therefore, that the degree of difficulty which a newly risen prince in a newly founded state encounters will depend upon the degree of ability he possesses. And since his rise from private citizen to prince presupposes either ability or good fortune, it would appear that one or the other of these factors will in part reduce his difficulties." (Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince." ch. 6)

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw Machiavelli on facebook and thought 2Pac. Good quote makes a lot of sense.

Anonymous said...

Machiavelli is the man!

Anonymous said...

This sounds like one of your other blog posts. I think it was superheroes. When I read the superhero one I decided that you were onto something. I googled the wealthiest people in history and picked up a cheap memoir by one of the Rockefellars on amazon. I got laid off from work 2 months ago and at this point I could use some answers I'm going to stir crazy thinking about how unproductive I'm being since my pay check doesn't represent a weeks worth of work. Thanks for the blog man. I'm not sure how many emails you get a day but you should know that you changed my way of thinking.

Anonymous said...

Who are you?

Anonymous said...

who is charlie large????

Unknown said...

Machiavelli is the man! Well said, anonymous commentor above. I just read a post on Peterman's Eye about The Prince...thought I'd share.

http://www.petermanseye.com/interesting-times/politics/370-the-prince

Cheers!

Unknown said...

hey charlie! just came upon your site and noticed the machiavelli excerpt. this was a great one to have posted in the days leading up to election day. well done!

Anonymous said...

Stopping by to show some love. Great blog!

Anonymous said...

More Posts!