Tao Te Ching
Discourses on Livy
By Machiavelli
Though not nearly as famous as The Prince, in fact almost unknown and unread; Machiavelli’s Discourses encompasses a much broader, comprehensive, and more insightful work from which a pamphlet, The Prince was hastily drawn in an attempt to impress and influence a patron. Reading The Discourses can radically change impressions about Machiavelli, his teachings, and his influence. For example, most may be surprised to see how highly Machiavelli regarded democracy as the best and highest form of government. One of the most significant repercussions of this book may apply almost equally to every form of politics, business, religion, and even personal life: the emphasis on seeing, understanding, and responding to situations as they really are rather than only relating to our beliefs about how things should be, how they have been, and how we wish them to be.
Quotes from Discourses on Livy
“A new prince, like David should exalt the humble and depress the great, ‘filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away.’”
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77. Stringing a Bow
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“all kinds of governments are defective; those three which we have qualified as good because they are too short lived, and the three bad ones because of their inherent viciousness.”
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“any one whose ambition so far misleads him as to call in strangers to aid in his defense, seeks to acquire that which he will not be able to hold.,,, to gratify a present desire, they think not of the evils which will in a short time result from it.”
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“Cunning and deceit will serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.”
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“Everything that occurs in the world, in every epoch, has something that corresponds to it in ancient times.”
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40. Returning
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“he to whom he has from cowardice conceded the one thing will not be satisfied but will want to take other things from him, and his arrogance will increase as his esteem for the prince is lessened.”
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“it is impossible to explain one's self when in doubt and indecision as to what is to be done... when we have decided upon that, it will be easy to accommodate our words to our acts.”
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“Let no man lose heart from thinking that he cannot do what others have done before him… men are born, and live, and die, always in accordance with the same rules.”
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“Men often deceive themselves in believing that by humility they can overcome insolence.”
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“Monarchies quickly becomes Tyrannies, Aristocracies Oligarchies, Democracies degenerate into Anarchy… no precaution can prevent them from sliding into their opposites because of how closely the virtue resembles the vice.”
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18. The Sick Society
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“Religion is the most necessary and assured support of any civil society... there never was a successful lawgiver who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people.”
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“slow resolves are invariably injurious... it is well in all deliberations to come at once to the essential point, and not always to remain in a state of indecision and uncertainty... tardiness helps no one, and generally injures yourself.”
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“The envious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents”
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“The nearer people are to the Roman Church, the less religious they are... Possibly the Christian religion would have been entirely extinguished by its corruption had not St Francis restored it to its original principles”
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“the people often, deceived by an illusive good, desire their own ruin; and, unless made sensible of the evil of the one and the benefit of the other course, they will expose the republic to infinite peril and damage”
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“Those present at any deliberative assemblies of men will have observed how erroneous their opinions often are... contrary to all reason... preference given to what common error approves, what is suggested by men more desirous of pleasing the masses than of promoting the general good.”
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“Those who read what the beginning of Rome was, and what her lawgivers and her organization, will not be astonished that so much virtue would have maintained itself during so many centuries; and that so great an empire should have sprung from it afterwards.”
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“When a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people are combined under the same constitution, these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.”
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Related Lineages (1 lineages)
Quotes about Discourses on Livy (2 quotes)
“The contradiction between the teaching of The Prince and that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers. The Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; for it is that Court it most clearly portrays.”
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“Very few who talk of The Prince have ever read more than a few sentences in it. But fewer still have read the work of Machiavelli which is the saner, the more rounded, the more comprehensive work, The Discourses... The Prince is great because of its intensity, The Discourses are great because of their variety; if The Prince is great because it is polemical, The Discourses are great because they have balance; The Discourses are great because they give us the philosophy of organic unity and the conditions under which alone a culture can survive.
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