A blunt handbook on how rulers gain and keep power, prizing effectiveness over conventional virtue. The book that made 'Machiavellian' a word.
Books mentioned in The Prince (4)
De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero: “Mr Burd points out that this passage is imitated directly from Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi, unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad posterius, si uti non licet superiore."”
Russia by Donald Mackenzie Wallace: “Institutions of a somewhat similar character, called "artel," exist in Russia to-day, cf.”
Catherine Sforza by Pier Desiderio Pasolini: “(*) Catherine Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Sforza and Lucrezia Landriani, born 1463, died 1509.”
The Eastern Question by Albert Sorel: “(*) Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: "The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe." Sorel's "Eastern Question."”
Books that mention The Prince (9)
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac: “Machiavelli wrote _The Prince_ at night, and by day was a common working-man like any one else; and more than all, the great Cervantes, who lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and helped to win that famous day, was called a 'base-born, handless dotard' by the scribblers of his day; there was an…”
Why Read the Classics by Italo Calvino: “Charterhouse essay: quoted quip 'the new Machiavelli's Prince'”
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova: “It turned out to be an early edition of Machiavelli: The Prince, accompanied by a series of discourses on morality I’d never before seen or even heard of.”
The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: “It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long drives into the mountains behind us and a memorable sail to Genoa across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince."”
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: “if Niccolò could survive such tribulation and live to write that perhaps embittered, perhaps sardonic parody of the sycophantic mirror-of-princes literature then so much in vogue, Il Principe, following it with the magisterial Discorsi, then he, Chamcha, need certainly not permit himself the luxury of defeat.”
Shame by Salman Rushdie: “'"Of those who have attained the position of prince by villainy,"' Iskander's voice whispered in his ear, 'Il Principe, chapter eight.'”
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino: “Balzac is quoted as having said The Charterhouse of Parma was like The Prince of a new Machiavelli”
Truman by David McCullough: “In his diary at Blois, Truman writes that Catherine de Médicis and the Medici family believed in government by deviation as set out in The Prince by Machiavelli”