Build on the power of the people, they are not as mud, the nobles can be made and unmade everyday, those who commit crimes on the way to the throne, have difficulty in keeping what is deemed theirs by the time they reach it, it is best to be with the people, on the side of them, than those of the petty nobles, but do beware those nobles who are ambitious and want what is yours by right, they will go to great lengths in discarding you once you are met with adversity!
a parable of speech but one worth of the undertaking...
Use cruelty only when necessary and use it quickly, for the terrors that are needed day by day only serve to loosen your grip, use deceit and cruelty quickly hmmmm, does make sense, leave them with awe and satisfied, with awe and satisfied! how pungent, how true! give them their thirst for blood! their vindictive thirst for justice! meet it and quench it, then they will be yours! they as the people, and perhaps the nobles as well...
Ah Lady Fortune, dost thou smile upon me? or thee? or...? Niccolo says to manhandle the wench, to get what is deemed yours, so Fortune's a dirty whore now? ie: see Macbeth for further reading on this one...
"And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore..."
Funny how Fortune has been seen as both male and female, how about Fortune as LBG? or tranny?...or a dog? that'd make sense, right?
Machiavelli has turned out to be not so hmmm...Machiavellian
The guy's got a conscience, its obvious, the whole "through whatever means" is there but its not like he agrees with it, in fact, he says one may acquire power through evil, yet he will not acquire glory, which, apparently, is the be all, end all of any great man/woman, existence proper etc. He says it himself that deeds, cruel deeds, which may be necessary for one to hold onto power, are evil, its not like he's throwing a blind eye at the situation, he's being pragmatic, practical, right? it was a manual, a how-to, an answers.com, a how to be a prince for dummies, dummy book, for a dummy, some fatcat Medici whom he wanted to impress just so he could get a job, his old job back that is, poor guy got demoted to being in the fields, (of his own villa btw) yet to a man like Niccolo, this was banishment and removal from what he held most dear, which can be tormentous, his own state...
p.s.: tormentous ...yeah, that's gonna make it to Websters one day...
p.p.s.: well, technically, he was actually banished from Florence, soooo not really demoted, was actually removed from the city by big burly Italian men who smelled of nasty Medici but...the sense is the same, right?
