Blog Friday -- The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian writer that prospered during the European Renaissance. Yet Machiavelli was not only a writer; he was also one of the founders of modern political science, a diplomat and political philosopher, a musician, he wrote plays and he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. What he is most famous for, after his plethora of accomplishments, would be his book The Prince, which is similar to a "Dummy's Guide" to being a ruler, king, president, etc.

The Prince is filled with extremely useful information, knowledge, and rules that should be followed by all those who wish to become a leader. The book is full of important quotes and phrases, but out of all of these the quote, "The ends justify the means," sticks out to me the most. In general, it means that no matter what you do, or how you do it, as long as you reach your goal it was all worth it. It doesn't matter who gets hurt or what allies you lost; it's what is gained in the end that matters.

The Prince also has information that would seemingly be unhelpful to present day leaders. "It is not essential that a Prince have all good qualities, but it is most essential he should seem to have them," appears to be one of those ideas that shouldn't be followed or thought well of in today's society. If you want to be seen as a good person, be that good person. You shouldn't lie and try to appear to be somebody you aren't at all. If a person were to find out you were a bad person in the end, you'll be seen as a liar and a horrible person.

If I were to give advice from Machiavelli's book, The Prince, to the Incas, it would have to be the following quote; "The wise man does at once what the fool does finally." One of the main reasons Pizarro was able to conquer the Incas is because the Incas gave the Conquistadors the time necessary to create a plan to overcome the giant ancient civilization. The Incas never thought of striking quickly against the invaders, which they could've done quickly with the lost of very little of their people. The fact that they let them live from the beginning, meet their ruler, etc, gave the Conquistadors the information and time they needed in order to conquer the Incas. If you were to compare the Incas vs Conquistadors conflict to the quote, the Incas would most definitely be the fools.

Site/Bibliography:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/