STEP THREE

Leadership in the Early Modern World

Niccoló Machiavelli was a Renaissance thinker supported for a time by the ruling family of Florence (Italy), the Medicis, for whom he dispensed advice on how to maintain power. After reading the following excerpt from Machiavelli–s seminal work The Prince (1513), answer the question below.

Nicoló Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” “The Prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.” “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. ... I see that one is obliged to look to the results of an action, and not to the means by which it was achieved. ... The fortunate man is he who fits his plan of action to the times.”

Source: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. W. K. Marriott. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1908, pp. 117–118, 129–131

Question

Question

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