When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.
Niccolò MachiavelliTags: reading machiavelli
From this arises the following question: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other, but because they are difficult to combine, it is far better to be loved than feared if you cannot be both.
Niccolò MachiavelliTags: fear love machiavelli
Finally, this principle and its corollary lead to a conclusion, deduced as an imperative: that the objective of the exercise of power is to reinforce, strengthen and protect the principality, but with this last understood to mean not the objective ensemble of its subjects and territory, but rather the prince's relation with what he owns, with the territory he has inherited or acquired, and with his subjects.
Michel FoucaultTags: machiavelli governmentality risk-society
A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means...
Paulo CoelhoTags: machiavelli
Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.
Niccolò MachiavelliTags: power government machiavelli
Do I look like I watch Star Trek?
Michael ScottTags: funny machiavelli star-trek
BILLY: Did you ever watch Star Trek?
MACHIAVELLI: Do I look like I watch Star Trek?
BILLY: It's hard to tell who's a Trekkie.
MACHIAVELLI: Billy, I ran one of the most sophisticated secret service organizations in the world. I did not have time for Star Trek. (pause) I was more of a Star Wars fan. Why do you ask?
BILLY: Well, when Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beamed down to a planet, usually with Dr. McCoy and sometimes with Scotty from engineering...
MACHIAVELLI: Wait a minute--what's Mr. Spock again?
BILLY: A Vulcan.
MACHIAVELLI: His rank.
BILLY: The first officer.
MACHIAVELLI: So the captain, the first officer, the ship's doctor, and sometimes the engineer all beam down to a planet. Together. The entire complement of the senior officers?
BILLY: (nods)
MACHIAVELLI: And who has command of the ship?
BILLY: (shrug) I don't know. Junior officers, I guess.
MACHIAVELLI: If they worked for me I'd have them court-martialed. That sounds like a gross dereliction of duty.
BILLY: I know. I always thought it was a little odd myself.
Tags: machiavelli star-trek enchantress billy-the-kid getting-to-the-point off-topic
[...] the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality
Jacques BarzunTags: machiavelli the-prince
[The prince] dare not let ethics keep him from doing whatever evil must be done to preserve himself and the state.
Jacques BarzunTags: machiavelli the-prince
These opportunities, then, gave these men the chance they needed, and their great abilities made them recognize it.
Niccolò MachiavelliTags: politics machiavelli moses the-prince
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