Quotation
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“A prince who wants to maintain himself must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or not use it, according to necessity.”
Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism · Renaissance · 1513
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a lesson about the gap between moral reputation and survival: among people who are not good, a ruler who is good in every case will be destroyed, so he must learn how not to be good and then judge when necessity requires it. A competing reading hears a blank cheque for cruelty, but the sentence is conditional on necessity and on maintaining the state. It is the pivot of chapter 15, where he says he will discuss things as they are, not as they are imagined. The capacity is the point. Constant vice is not.
Did Niccolò Machiavelli really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard modern English of chapter 15. The Italian is 'imparare a potere essere non buono, e usarlo e non usarlo secondo la necessità'. W. K. Marriott's older English says 'know how to do wrong'. Same chapter, same claim. This is not 'the ends justify the means', which is not his sentence.
Where it comes from
The Prince, chapter 15
Approximate date: 1513.
How to use it
A head teacher in Birmingham who will never exclude, never disappoint a parent, and never refuse a harmful request will not, on this chapter, thereby become good. The people around the rule will use the refusal to use force. The sentence does not make exclusion noble. It says that a role with responsibility for a body of people cannot outsource every hard no to the hope that others will be kind.
A mindset reading
Separate 'I am unwilling to learn how this harm is done' from 'I have learned it and judged it unnecessary'. He thinks the first is how decent people lose. The habit is dangerous in ordinary life if every inconvenience is renamed necessity. Necessity is his strict word. A want is not yet a necessity, and chapter 15 is not a personality.
Understand the philosophy
Machiavelli is breaking with mirror-of-princes books that list virtues and stop. The key terms are necessità and the ability not to be good, set against the imagined republics of writers who never discuss how people actually behave. Chapter 15 introduces the paired qualities, liberality and meanness, cruelty and mercy, that the next chapters sort. The misattributed line about ends and means is a later summary. This sentence is the one he wrote.
- power
- ethics
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a lesson about the gap between moral reputation and survival: among people who are not good, a ruler who is good in every case will be destroyed, so he must learn how not to be good and then judge when necessity requires it. A competing reading hears a blank cheque for cruelty, but the sentence is conditional on necessity and on maintaining the state. It is the pivot of chapter 15, where he says he will discuss things as they are, not as they are imagined. The capacity is the point. Constant vice is not.
Did Niccolò Machiavelli really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard modern English of chapter 15. The Italian is 'imparare a potere essere non buono, e usarlo e non usarlo secondo la necessità'. W. K. Marriott's older English says 'know how to do wrong'. Same chapter, same claim. This is not 'the ends justify the means', which is not his sentence.
Which work is it in?
The Prince, chapter 15 Approximate date: 1513.