* Declan mentions Machiavelli while in the playground.

Using fortresses can be a good plan, but Machiavelli says he shall " blame anyone who, trusting in fortresses, thinks little of being hated by the people ".

Machiavelli used the Persian empire of Darius III, conquered by Alexander the Great, to illustrate this point and then noted that the Medici, if they think about it, will find this historical example similar to the " kingdom of the Turk " ( Ottoman Empire ) in their time-making this a potentially easier conquest to hold than France would be.

Finally, Machiavelli makes a point that bringing new benefits to a conquered people will not be enough to cancel the memory of old injuries, an idea Allan Gilbert said can be found in Tacitus and Seneca the Younger.

King Ferdinand of Spain is cited by Machiavelli as an example of a monarch who gained esteem by showing his ability through great feats and who, in the name of religion, conquered many territories and kept his subjects occupied so that they had no chance to rebel.

Having discussed the various types of principalities, Machiavelli turns to the ways a state can attack other territories or defend itself.

Machiavelli said that The Prince would be about princedoms, mentioning that he has written about republics elsewhere ( possibly referring to the Discourses on Livy although this is debated ), but in fact he mixes discussion of republics into this in many places, effectively treating republics as a type of princedom also, and one with many strengths.

Chanakya is often called the " Indian Machiavelli ", although his works predate Machiavelli's by about 1, 800 years.

Frederick had, of course, read Machiavelli long before ; it is not exactly clear what drew his attention to this subject in the late 1730s, although his affiliation with Voltaire and his impending change in rank most certainly contributed to the project.

The title identifies the work's subject as the first ten books of Livy's Ab urbe condita, which relate the expansion of Rome through the end of the Third Samnite War in 293 BCE, although Machiavelli discusses what can be learned from other parts of Roman history, as well.

Leo Strauss argued that the strong influence of Xenophon, a student of Socrates more known as an historian, rhetorician and soldier, was a major source of Socratic ideas for Machiavelli, sometimes not in line with Aristotle.

Machiavelli is sometimes seen as the prototype of a modern empirical scientist, building generalizations from experience and historical facts, and emphasizing the uselessness of theorizing with the imagination.

Firstly, particularly in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is unusual in the positive side he sometimes seems to describe in factionalism in republics.

Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies ( just as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also explaining how they could sometimes work ).

Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies ( just as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also explaining how they could sometimes work ).

Vetinari is sometimes said to have been based on the Italian statesman and diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, but in fact favours a subtly different ( though equally pragmatic ) form of statecraft.

The term is sometimes used more broadly and considered to have begun in the 1500s with Niccolò Machiavelli, Martin Luther and John Calvin ; to have also included Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Giambattista Vico, Voltaire and Thomas Paine ; and to have ended at the latest in 1804 with the death of Immanuel Kant.

The philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli is sometimes presented as a model of moral nihilism, but this is at best ambiguous.

Of the Marxist Humanist's reliance on the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Althusser writes, " We do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other people's " ( cited in Gregory Elliot's " introduction: In the Mirror of Machiavelli " an introduction for Althusser's " Machiavelli and us ", p. xi ).

The work is often compared to the later works of Machiavelli.

Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time Machiavelli began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that ( unlike his works on political theory ) were both popular and widely known in his lifetime.

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and was a dramaturge ( Clizia, Mandragola ), a poet ( Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, Canti carnascialeschi ), and a novelist ( Belfagor arcidiavolo ).

While Machiavellianism is notable in the works of Machiavelli, Machiavelli's works are complex and he is generally agreed to have been more than just " Machiavellian " himself.

One of the most important early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, whose work commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in 1576.

He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were the " Koran of the courtiers ", that " he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends ".

* Machiavelli at the Marxists Internet Archive, including some of his works

These writers, such as Machiavelli, also wrote important prescriptive works describing how such governments should function.

The early 16th century works of Machiavelli ( especially The Prince ) played a central role in popularizing the use of the word " state " in something similar to its modern sense.

Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by Shaftesbury, Winckelmann, Machiavelli, and John Adams.

Xenophon however, like Plato and Aristotle, was a follower of Socrates, and his works show approval of a " teleological argument ", while Machiavelli rejected such arguments.

The way in which the word state came to acquire this modern type of meaning during the Renaissance has been the subject of many academic discussions, with this sentence and similar ones in the works of Machiavelli being considered particularly important.

Machiavelli is indicating in this passage, as in some others in his works, that Christianity itself was making Italians helpless and lazy concerning their own politics, as if they would leave dangerous rivers un-controlled.

One of the most important early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, Discourse against Machiavelli, commonly also referred to as Anti Machiavel, published in Geneva in 1576.

He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that they treated his works as the " Koran of the courtiers ".

Much of this debate is related to the works of the French philosopher Michel Foucault ( 1926 – 1984 ), who, following the Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli ( 1469 – 1527 ), sees power as " a complex strategic situation in a given society social setting ".

Noble desires prompt man to do works of charity, they make men sober, enlightened and good ; ignoble desires make men to adopt the policy of Machiavelli, to distribute opium, intoxicating liquor, and introduce syphillis and create bastards, and murder helpless people for the sake of rubber, gold and land .... Buddhism condemns ignoble desires and emphasises on the necessity of cultivating noble desires.

Skinner's particular contribution was to articulate a theory of interpretation which concentrated on recovering the ' speech acts ' embedded in the ' illocutionary ' statements of specific individuals in writing works of political theory ( Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Thomas Hobbes have been continuing preoccupations ).

Machiavelli does say that the Prince must override traditional moral rules in favor of power-maintaining reasons of State, but he also says, particularly in his other works, that the successful ruler should be guided by Pagan, rather than Christian virtues.

Machiavelli makes liberal references and allusions to the other surviving books of Ab urbe condita, as well as to other works of classical literature.

A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimization of political expediency and even malpractice.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in statebuilding-an approach embodied by the saying that " the ends justify the means.

It should be noted that classical writers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Theodore Roosevelt, are often cited as " founding fathers " of realism by contemporary self-described realists.

He was often caricatured as Oliver Cromwell and Guy Fawkes during this period, as well as Satan, " Carlo Khan " ( see James Sayers ) and Machiavelli.

While Bodin's common ground with Machiavelli is not so large, and indeed Bodin opposed the Godless vision of the world in Machiavelli, they are often enough paired, for example by A. C. Crombie as philosophical historians with contemporary concerns ; Crombie also links Bodin with Francis Bacon, as rational and critical historians.

Niccolò Machiavelli even said that condottieri fought each other in grandiose, but often pointless and near-bloodless battles.

Further, it is not at all clear that Machiavelli himself was the apologist for immorality as whom he is often portrayed: the basic problem is the apparent contradiction between the monarchism of The Prince and the republicanism of the Discourses.

Many philosophers from the Renaissance are today read and remembered, even if often not categorized into a single category, but spread into modern philosophy ( if they fit, especially if oriented towards empiricism and rationalism, like Galileo Galilei or Machiavelli ) or instead put back into the Middle Ages, especially if heavily influenced by esoteric traditions ( like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and even Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno ).

The text is considered a classic in International Relations theory, and is often dubbed one of the first modern Realist texts, following in the fashion of Thucydides and Machiavelli.

The political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli as described in The Prince is often regarded as a classic manual of opportunist scheming, and indeed a " Machiavellian " is nowadays defined as " a cunning, amoral, and opportunist person, especially a politician ".