Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince

546 Words2 Pages

The first most emphasized characteristic in Machiavelli’s theory of an ideal prince is power when possible a prince should attempt to gather support from others but always rely on his own arms. Relying on friends, luck, or other people’s arms may seem easier but will turn out harder to hold on to in the end. Machiavelli provides an entire chapter based on Cesare Borgia, who rose to eminence mostly through his father’s connections, however he was cunning enough to take hold of his newly acquired position. In the beginning of The Prince Machiavelli classifies many kinds of states, mainly focusing on one that is the hardest to attend to also known as New States. Since a New State is easy to conquer but hard to handle a prince must provide a powerful central management. Without it a …show more content…

However a person who has a position of authority but does not embody the qualities needed to encourage the skills and abilities among their own workers will quickly lose respect and support from their people. In the unstable time of shifting powers, where Machiavelli was born into, there was only solely power grabbing but no leadership. Machiavelli wrote “It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles." When a leader only acts on impulse because of his position, eventually the people begin to disagree and soon revolt. People of a principality should have respect, loyalty, and fear towards their prince. A society that is loyal and fearful of their prince with fight bravely against threats and obey the prince’s policies. To reach the premises of this ideal goal the base would have to come from the citizens’ trust towards their prince. Though he had low tolerance for dishonesty, Machiavelli still believed that in order to be a good leader and to keep a strong grasp of your power, one must learn to be “not so good.” A good leader must know when to be dishonest

Open Document