The Prince is a short treatise in twenty-six chapters that Machiavelli wrote in 1513, shortly after losing his post in the Florentine chancery, and dedicated, in its final form, to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. In the dedication he offers the Medici what he calls his knowledge of the actions of great men, gained from long experience of modern affairs and continual reading of ancient ones.
Author
Niccolo Machiavelli
Frequently Cited
“men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot”
“it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with”
“it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves”
Dell'arte della guerra, printed in Florence in 1521, is the only one of Machiavelli's political works published in his lifetime. It is a dialogue in seven books, set in 1516 in the Orti Oricellari, the shaded garden of Cosimo Rucellai, where the humanist circle that Machiavelli frequented met to discuss Livy and republican government.