Machiavelli
What The Prince Actually Says, and 8 Claims Checked

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince after he was dismissed from his post in the Florentine government, and imprisoned and tortured on a false suspicion of conspiracy. According to Cary Nederman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it was “Penned at the end of 1513 (and perhaps early 1514), but only published posthumously in 1532”, by an author who, “among other things, sought to regain his status in Florentine political affairs.” It is short, and its most famous lines are often not in it. Here are eight claims, checked against the Italian text on Italian Wikisource and the public-domain English translations by W. K. Marriott (The Prince) and Ninian Hill Thomson (the Discourses).

1. “Machiavelli wrote that the ends justify the means”

Myth The phrase is not in The Prince. A search of Marriott’s complete translation for “ends justify”, “end justifies” and “justify the means” finds nothing. The nearest passage is in chapter 18, and it says something narrower. In Italian: “e nelle azioni di tutti gli uomini, e massime de’ Principi, dove non è giudizio a chi reclamare, si guarda al fine.” In our translation: “and in the actions of all men, and above all of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, people look to the end (the outcome).”

He goes on: “Facci adunque un Principe conto di vivere e mantenere lo Stato; i mezzi saranno sempre giudicati onorevoli, e da ciascuno lodati”, “so let a prince aim at staying alive and keeping his state; the means will always be judged honourable, and praised by everyone” (our translation), and he says why: “perchè il vulgo ne va sempre preso con quello che pare, e con l’evento della cosa”, because the common crowd is always taken in by appearances and by the result. It is a description of how people judge rulers, and practical advice built on it, not a moral rule that a good end makes a bad act good. Marriott’s English of the key clause, “which it is not prudent to challenge”, does not match the Italian, which is why we translate it ourselves here.

The closest he comes in his two main books is in his Discourses on Livy, book 1, chapter 9, about Romulus killing his brother to found Rome. Thomson translates: “For although the act condemn the doer, the end may justify him; and when, as in the case of Romulus, the end is good, it will always excuse the means”. But “the means” is Thomson’s word. The Italian reads “lo effetto lo scusi”, the result excuses him, the founder. The same chapter warns such a founder not to pass his absolute power on.

2. “The idea that results justify actions started with Machiavelli”

Myth It is much older, and an ancient version, in Ovid, already rejects it. In Ovid’s Heroides 2, Phyllis quotes the saying “exitus acta probat” (“the outcome proves the deeds”) and then curses anyone who “ab eventu facta notanda putat”, who thinks deeds should be judged by their result (our translations).

3. “It is better to be feared than loved”

Partly true He asks the question in chapter 17: “s’egli è meglio essere amato che temuto, o temuto che amato” (whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared than loved). His first answer is both: “si vorrebbe essere l’uno e l’altro”. Only because that is hard does he say, in Marriott’s translation, “it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.” The Italian word is sicuro, “safer”, not “better”.

Then comes the limit that usually gets dropped: “Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred”, which, he says, will always be possible “as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women.”

4. “The Prince is a straightforward handbook for tyrants”

Disputed Scholars have read it very differently for centuries. The Stanford Encyclopedia sets out the range. At one end, “The most extreme versions of this reading find Machiavelli to be a ‘teacher of evil’, in the famous words of Leo Strauss”. A milder version, from Quentin Skinner (1978), is that doing what convention calls vicious is a “last best” option for a ruler. At the other end, “Some scholars, such as Garrett Mattingly (1958), have pronounced Machiavelli the supreme satirist”, and Mary Dietz (1986) argued that he wanted to “trap” the prince.

The idea that the book exposes rulers rather than serving them is old. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract (1762): “En feignant de donner des leçons aux Rois il en a donné de grandes aux peuples. Le Prince de Machiavel est le livre des républicains.” In G. D. H. Cole’s translation: “He professed to teach kings; but it was the people he really taught. His Prince is the book of Republicans.” What is not in doubt is the setting Nederman describes: the book was “Originally written for presentation to Giuliano de’Medici” by an author who, “among other things, sought to regain his status” in Florentine politics. How the book was meant to be read is another matter: the texts do not settle it, and this page does not.

5. “Machiavelli believed in rule by strongmen”

Partly true, and misleading as a summary of his views. His longer work, the Discourses on Livy, which Nederman writes “perhaps most honestly expresses Machiavelli’s personal political beliefs and commitments”, argues for republics: “Only in a republic, for which Machiavelli expresses a distinct preference, may this goal be attained.” One chapter title reads, in Thomson’s translation, “That a People is wiser and more constant than a Prince”. How The Prince fits with this is itself argued; Nederman notes that the two works lead to conclusions “quite different from—many scholars have said contradictory to—” each other. The strongman half is not invented, though. In the Romulus chapter (Discourses I.9) he concludes that “a ordinare una republica è necessario essere solo”, that one man must act alone to found a republic, and adds that what he founds lasts only when it is left “alla cura di molti”, in the care of many.

6. “Machiavellian means what Machiavelli taught”

Partly true The Prince does tell a ruler he must be “a great pretender and dissembler” (chapter 18, Marriott). But the word began as an insult, not a summary. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “Machiavellian” meant “cunning, deceitful, habitually duplicitous, unscrupulous” by the 1570s and was “A word of abuse in English well before his works were translated (‘The Discourses’ in 1636, ‘The Prince’ in 1640)”. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to 1572. His Art of War had reached English earlier, in Peter Whitehorne’s translation of 1560, so the point holds for his two political books rather than for everything he wrote.

The English stage used his name for villains. In Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta, a character called Machiavel speaks the prologue: “I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.” In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3, Richard of Gloucester boasts that he can “set the murderous Machiavel to school.” Both are characters in plays, not quotations of Machiavelli. Whether he was himself “a ‘Machiavellian’ in the sense commonly ascribed to him” is, in Nederman’s words, one of the questions scholars still ask. For the psychology term, see our page on dark psychology.

7. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”

Unverified as Machiavelli’s. It is not in Marriott’s Prince or Thomson’s Discourses: a search of both complete texts for “enemies closer” finds nothing. Another line credited to him is missing from both books too: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception”. The nearest real passage is Discourses III.40, “That Fraud is fair in War”: “he who gets the better of his enemy by fraud, is as much extolled as he who prevails by force” (Thomson). It is limited to war, and he adds that no fraud is glorious “which leads you to break your plighted word”. We did not search his other works, so “not in his two main books” is as far as the evidence goes.

8. “Everyone sees what you appear to be”

True Some of the sharp lines really are his, in Marriott’s translation of The Prince:

• “Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are” (chapter 18).
• “men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived” (chapter 18).
• “men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot” (chapter 3).
• “where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those men to whom I have directed your attention” (chapter 26).

Chapter 18 also opens with this line: “Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft.” His advice is to hold to the good where possible, “but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.”

Our reading

The Machiavelli of the quote cards is a cynic who thinks anything goes if it works. The Machiavelli of the texts is harder to pin down: a republican who wrote a guide for princes, whose best-known lines are descriptions of how people judge power, hedged with conditions that usually get cut. Whether he meant it all is a question scholars still argue.

Sources

• Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, chapters 17 and 18, and Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio I.9, Italian text on Italian Wikisource.
• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott, Project Gutenberg.
• Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, trans. Ninian Hill Thomson, Project Gutenberg.
• Cary Nederman, “Niccolò Machiavelli”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 2023).
• Ovid, Heroides 2, Latin text, The Latin Library.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social III.6 (1762 edition, French Wikisource) and The Social Contract, trans. G. D. H. Cole, Project Gutenberg.
• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Arte of Warre, trans. Peter Whitehorne (1560), Internet Archive.
• Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, and William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Project Gutenberg.
• Online Etymology Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, “Machiavellian”.

Checked September 2026.

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