Key Arguments

• The manner in which we live and ought to live are "so wide asunder" that abandoning reality for ideal norms tends to destroy the actor.
• Anyone who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness will be ruined since many are not good.
• Therefore, preserving rule requires the capacity to depart from goodness and to calibrate its use according to necessity.

Source Quotes

For many Republics and Princedoms have been imagined that were never seen or known to exist in reality. And the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential, therefore, for a Prince who desires to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use or not to use his goodness as necessity requires.

And the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential, therefore, for a Prince who desires to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use or not to use his goodness as necessity requires. Laying aside, therefore, all fanciful notions concerning a Prince, and considering those only that are true, I say that all men when they are spoken of, and Princes more than others from their being set so high, are characterized by some one of those qualities which attach either praise or blame.

Key Concepts

• the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself;
• since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good.
• It is essential, therefore, for a Prince who desires to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use or not to use his goodness as necessity requires.

Context

Chapter 15, lines 980-1007, core normative thesis on prudential flexibility in moral conduct.