Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Morals of the Prince"

In The Morals of the Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli argues the various methods of being a successful prince. He states that a prince cannot always be good, and if he wants to keep his post he must learn not to be good. Basically, Machiavelli states that if you are too generous, the non-generous people will take advantage of you and will take away your power. If a prince doesn t want to rob his people and avoid poverty, he must be a miser, or greedy. This is what keeps a prince in power. Machiavelli always states that it is better for a ruler to be merciful than to be cruel. A ruler must be somewhat cruel in order to keep his subjects united and loyal, yet he must be merciful as to not drive always his subjects. Also, Machiavelli believes that it was better to be feared than loved. He believes it is simply safer and that the nature of man makes it harder to overthrow a feared leader than a loved one. I agree with most of the points Machiavelli makes. I do believe that you cannot be too ge
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