Renaissance

Niccolò Machiavelli

1469–1527

Florentine, author of The Prince

He wrote The Prince out of office, which is when political realism gets its sharpest. The sentence on fear and love is a calculation, not a sneer, and he spends the next clauses qualifying it.

In the canon

  1. It is much safer to be feared than loved, when one of the two must be lacking.The Prince

All voices