Machiavelli on how people really live, not how they ought to. From The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, 1513.
For fourteen years, Niccolò Machiavelli worked for the government of Florence. The job sent him to the court of France and to Cesare Borgia, where he watched how rulers really behaved.
By 1513 he was out of office, writing a short book on how to rule. Older advice books told rulers to be generous, merciful and honest. He set out to write a different kind.
In The Prince (1513), Machiavelli broke with the old advice books for rulers. How people live, he wrote, is far from how they ought to live, and a leader who acts only on the ideal is ruined. He had watched patience fail his own boss, Piero Soderini, who was driven out when the Medici returned in 1512.
Be good with your eyes open, not with them shut. Practical advice: before a plan depends on other people, look at what they did last time, and plan for that.
Well established · checked against 6 sourcesRewrite one plan around what people actually did last time.
“I keep planning around how people should act, then feel let down. How do I see them more clearly?”
See It As It Is and the other 11 ideas of The Prince, a minute at a time.
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