The Prince

you wish to please me, and to bring success and honour to yourself, do right and study, because others will help you if you help yourself."

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined

For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event.

We have not seen great things done in our time ex­cept by those who have been con­sidered mean; the rest have failed.

There­fore, a prince, not be­ing able to ex­er­cise this vir­tue of lib­er­al­ity in such a way that it is re­cog­nized, ex­cept to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the repu­ta­tion of be­ing mean, for in time he will come to be more con­sidered than if lib­eral,

And al­though they were great and won­der­ful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more op­por­tun­ity than the present of­fers, for their en­ter­prises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.

I con­clude, there­fore that, for­tune be­ing change­ful and man­kind stead­fast in their ways, so long as the two are in agree­ment men are suc­cess­ful, but un­suc­cess­ful when they fall out. For my part I con­sider that it is bet­ter to be ad­ven­tur­ous than cau­tious, be­cause for­tune is a wo­man, and if you wish to keep her un­der it is ne­ces­sary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she al­lows her­self to be mastered by the ad­ven­tur­ous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, there­fore, al­ways, wo­man­like, a lover of young men, be­cause they are less cau­tious, more vi­ol­ent, and with more au­da­city com­mand her.

This fol­lows from what I have said, that two men work­ing dif­fer­ently bring about the same ef­fect, and of two work­ing sim­il­arly, one at­tains his ob­ject and the other does not.

There­fore, do not let our princes ac­cuse for­tune for the loss of their prin­cip­al­it­ies after so many years’ pos­ses­sion, but rather their own sloth, be­cause in quiet times they never thought there could be a change (it is a com­mon de­fect in man not to make any pro­vi­sion in the calm against the tem­pest)