Men rarely adapt their methods to changing times because of nature and habituation to past success, so they fail when circumstances shift.

By Niccolò Machiavelli, from The Prince

Key Arguments

  • He claims no man is prudent enough to adapt fully to changes.
  • Two causes: natural inclination fixes one’s course; prior prosperity entrenches adherence to the same path.
  • Therefore, when caution is needed of the impetuous (or vice versa), those fixed by nature cannot switch and are undone.

Source Quotes

For if to one who conducts himself with caution and patience, time and circumstances are propitious, so that his method of acting is good, he goes on prospering; but if these change he is ruined, because he does not change his method of acting. For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it. And so when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone: whereas, had he changed his nature with time and circumstances, his fortune would have been unchanged.
For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it. And so when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone: whereas, had he changed his nature with time and circumstances, his fortune would have been unchanged. Pope Julius II proceeded with impetuosity in all his undertakings, and found time and circumstances in such harmony with his mode of acting that he always obtained a happy result.

Key Concepts

  • no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes
  • because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it.
  • when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone

Context

Chapter 25, lines 1622-1684; psychological account for failures to adapt methods to new conditions.