Similarities Between The Prince And Niccolo Machiavelli

The era of the Italian Renaissance was a time period for many great thinkers whose minds helped shape the way that people see the world today and Niccolo Machiavelli is certainly no exception. He is most assuredly one of the top philosophical and political minds in the history books and has been an inspiration for many leaders. Unfortunately, tyrannical dictators such as Adolf Hitler were known to use Machiavelli’s teachings in their quest for power so the world has not always viewed this man in the most positive light, even with the things that he tried to teach. Niccolo Machiavelli was born in May of 1469 in Florence, Italy to a family that was of noble blood, but by no means rich. His mother was a poet and his father was a lawyer and they could not afford to send him to a proper school. Not much is known about his early childhood or teenage years; only that because of their noble blood, Niccolo’s family did their best to maintain their status and Niccolo did eventually grow up to be a well brought up young man with a good image. He eventually attended college at the

In The Prince he writes to a ruler about how to keep power and that word – Prince – is used on purpose as a representation of a political system. The Discourses is a little less about power and a little more about behavior in politics and more of Machiavelli’s ideas’ themselves are talked about. This is where one of his most famous quotes comes from: “It is best to be both feared and loved. But if you have to choose between the two, it is better to be feared than loved.” This is a pretty good generalization in one sentence of his overall ideas on politics. He didn’t care about how things SHOULD work, he focused on how to be successful with how things DID work. He was a