Quotation
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“It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one cannot be both.”
Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism · Renaissance · 1513, published 1532
What does it mean?
Love is unreliable, he argues, because it rests on a bond people break when it suits them, while fear is kept by dread of punishment and fails less often. Both together would be better, and he thinks that pair is hard to hold, so fear is safer if one of the two must be lacking, provided the prince avoids hatred. A rival reading drops the condition and hears a general lesson that cruelty is the higher political art. The argument is chapter 17 of The Prince, about new princes, not a complete moral theory of ordinary life.
Did Niccolò Machiavelli really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the argument in The Prince, chapter 17. The condition that one cannot be both is part of the claim and is often dropped. He also says the prince must avoid hatred. The Italian is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
The Prince, chapter 17
Approximate date: 1513, published 1532.
How to use it
A supervisor in a warehouse near Daventry chooses a public telling-off because fear is faster to manufacture than trust, and calls the choice realism. Machiavelli describes a tactic for someone who cannot have both fear and love, and he adds that hatred has to be avoided. He does not show that the tactic is a life a team ought to want, and a warehouse is not a new principality, which is a further limit on the borrowing.
A mindset reading
Read the condition before the toughness: safer to be feared than loved, once the clause about failing to manage both is cut, is a cruder doctrine than the chapter, and a further warning against hatred is often cut with it. Quotation that keeps only the fear has already edited the politics, and the calculation is narrower than the proverb that circulates in management talk.
Understand the philosophy
The Prince asks how new principalities are acquired and held, not how a private person should treat friends. The key term nearby is virtu, political capacity and nerve, which is not moral virtue. He also wrote the Discourses on Livy in a republican key, and that book is not this chapter. The slogan that the ends justify the means is not a sentence of his.
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FAQ
What does it mean?
Love is unreliable, he argues, because it rests on a bond people break when it suits them, while fear is kept by dread of punishment and fails less often. Both together would be better, and he thinks that pair is hard to hold, so fear is safer if one of the two must be lacking, provided the prince avoids hatred. A rival reading drops the condition and hears a general lesson that cruelty is the higher political art. The argument is chapter 17 of The Prince, about new princes, not a complete moral theory of ordinary life.
Did Niccolò Machiavelli really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the argument in The Prince, chapter 17. The condition that one cannot be both is part of the claim and is often dropped. He also says the prince must avoid hatred. The Italian is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
The Prince, chapter 17 Approximate date: 1513, published 1532.