Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli was born on May 3, 1469 in Florence Italy. He led a very quiet childhood and when he got older, he got into politics. His first position was as a secretary, but he quickly rose into more power and he was soon engaging in diplomatic missions. He met many different politicians, but Cesare Borgia was the one that had the most impact on his life. He was a lot like the prince described in Machiavelli's book called The Prince. Machiavelli lost his job when the Medici came rule Florence and the Republic was therefore overthrown. He then was forced to switch from being active in politics to write about them instead. He tried to please the Medici by writing a book about what he thought were the Medici's goals, and then dedicating it to them. This book was called The Prince. Unfortunately, the Medici didn't agree. He wrote The Prince in 1513, which was the first book that he wrote

http://www.ctbw.com/lubman.htm

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/macv.htm 

"Before all else, be armed." To me, this quote shows the most relevance to leadership today. Machiavelli stated this quote in his first book, The Prince. Machiavelli stated strongly in this book that as a leader, your first priority should be war, and you should always be ready for it. Former President George Bush (2001-2009) was a great example of this. Over his term in office, he spent 54% of the U.S.s' income on the military and their needs. This money could have been spent instead on education, health care or preventing other disasters that happen in the U.S. every day. His belief was that if we have a good military, then we will succeed, so it should come first.

This quote also represents other leaders in other countries as well.

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

“It is not essential that a Prince have all good qualities, but it is most essential that he should seem to have them.” This quote is saying that a leader doesn’t really have to be good, but if he everyone view him as a good person, and he gets what all of his followers want, and no one knows that he is a bad person, everyone is okay with it. An example of this is in Bring it On. The cheer captain steels cheers from another squad, but nobody on her team knows this. The captain seems good, but really she’s not. Eventually the team finds out about this and they are all very upset. In my opinion, this is not a good thing, because you don’t really know a person if they are pretending to be good. Overall though, I think this is bad advice for a leader and they should always try to have good qualities. 

A good quote that would have been useful for Pizarro and his men would have been, "Before all else, be armed." When Pizarro and his men went to meet the Inca emperor for the first time, he didn't bring any weapons at all. If they had, they could have battled them right then and there, instead of having to plan everything out. This would have been good because the Inca's weren't prepared at all, and most of them were still scared on the horses, and other things that Pizarro and his men possessed. In the end, Pizarro still won, but it took more time and effort than what was originally required. 

This picture represents Machiavelli's quote, "Before all else, be armed."

Excellent website on Niccolo Machiavelli: http://www.ctbw.com/lubman.htm 

Here is a much more dense reading on Machiavelli: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/

Leadership Picture