Key Arguments

• A man may be feared without being hated if the prince does not meddle with property or women.
• Executions should occur only with clear cause or reasonable justification.
• Confiscation provokes enduring resentment; men more readily forget a father’s death than the loss of patrimony.
• Pretexts for confiscation are easy to find, and rapine becomes a habit, whereas reasons for shedding blood are fewer and soon exhausted.

Source Quotes

For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp. Nevertheless a Prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he do not win love he may escape hate. For a man may very well be feared and yet not hated, and this will be the case so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects.

Nevertheless a Prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he do not win love he may escape hate. For a man may very well be feared and yet not hated, and this will be the case so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects. And if constrained to put any to death, he should do so only when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification.

For a man may very well be feared and yet not hated, and this will be the case so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects. And if constrained to put any to death, he should do so only when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification. But, above all, he must abstain from the property of others.

And if constrained to put any to death, he should do so only when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification. But, above all, he must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.

But, above all, he must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Moreover, pretexts for confiscation are never to seek, and he who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his; whereas reasons for shedding blood are fewer, and sooner exhausted.

For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Moreover, pretexts for confiscation are never to seek, and he who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his; whereas reasons for shedding blood are fewer, and sooner exhausted. But when a Prince is with his army, and has many soldiers under his command, he must needs disregard the reproach of cruelty, for without such a reputation in its Captain, no army can be held together or kept under any kind of control.

Key Concepts

• a Prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he do not win love he may escape hate.
• so long as he does not meddle with the property or with the women of his citizens and subjects.
• if constrained to put any to death, he should do so only when there is manifest cause or reasonable justification.
• above all, he must abstain from the property of others.
• For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.
• he who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his; whereas reasons for shedding blood are fewer, and sooner exhausted.

Context

Chapter 17, lines 1055-1113; practical constraints to prevent hatred while maintaining a regime of fear.