The_Prince

The Prince Response to “The Prince” My outlook was completely changed about the life of a prince after reading this piece. I predicted that it would be the same old story of the courageous and fearless prince; instead, I found it to be completely opposite. Basically throughout this whole paper, Machiavelli writes about any ruler wishing to stay in power must “learn how not to be good”. He wrote about it from a completely different perspective than what I had expected. He talks about ignoring morality at certain times so that a “prince” can remain a prince. When people think of the fairy tale prince, they usually think of someone who has strong morals and is courageous and trustworthy; yet Machiavelli writes that a prince “should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands”. He praised Cesare Borgia and Hannibal because they were cruel, and he insists that it is necessary for a prince to be cruel at times. According to him, mercy, faithfulness, humanness, forthrightness, and religion are all qualities that a prince must appear to have. He says that it “is not necessary for a prince to have all the above qualities, but it is very necessary for him to prince, about, because, cruel, writes, should, people, out, one, necessary, two, life, completely, agree, yet, wrote, times, think, strong, story, stolen, selfish, qualities, points, perspective, must, machiavelli, live, know, first, examples, example, even, death, courageous, changed