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Niccolò Machiavelli: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Niccolò Machiavelli, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Machiavelli: it's safer for a ruler to be feared than loved

  Love depends on other people's goodwill, Machiavelli wrote, and goodwill is fickle — it breaks the moment it's inconvenient. Fear depends only on the ruler's own power to punish, s…

  — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

• A Renaissance diplomat argued rulers should act badly when necessity demands it

  Writing in 1513 after being exiled from Florentine politics, Niccolo Machiavelli argued in The Prince that effective rulers must sometimes abandon conventional morality, being fear…

  — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

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