{"id":3397,"date":"2013-01-09T18:29:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T23:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2013-01-09T18:29:19","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T23:29:19","slug":"more-machiavellian-misquotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/more-machiavellian-misquotes\/","title":{"rendered":"More Machiavellian Misquotes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"FaceMachiavelli today is known to many<\/strong> by sayings that aren’t actually his; pseudo-quotations or mis-attributed sayings that appear on slovenly, un-moderated, un-verified websites that do an enormous disservice to everyone by their very existence.<\/p>\n

These sites seem to feed one another, because find one misquote on one of them and you’re sure to find it parroted without even the slightest effort to verify it, on all the rest. Since these sites are predominantly about ad revenue, it’;s little wonder they are so poor.<\/p>\n

Most people are unable to discern the wheat from the chaff ion these sites in great part because\u00a0few can actually lay claim to actually having read him (The Prince<\/em>, let alone The Discourses<\/em> or his other works). And from that stems several misconceptions about what he said and didn\u2019t say (and the same goes to every other author and philosopher so frequently misquoted on these sites).<\/p>\n

Machiavelli did not<\/strong><\/em> write, for example, \u2018the end justifies the means.\u2019 It is a modern condensation \u2013 and a considerable simplification \u2013 of an idea expressed in The Prince<\/em>. However memorable it is, he had a lot more to say about politics and the behaviour of rulers than that one line.<\/p>\n

Machiavelli was just being a realist. He certainly was not a hedonist like Aleister Crowley who wrote,<\/p>\n

\u201cDo what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[pullquote]These so-called quotation databases are rife with errors, mis-attributions, mis-spellings, grammatical and punctuation errors.[\/pullquote]Machiavelli wrote that the effect of a ruler\u2019s actions mattered more than the deeds themselves, as long as the end was good for the state. That has been boiled down, in modern times, into “the end justifies the means.” But this shorthand removes it from the all-important context that makes sense of his words (taking things out of context and using them for your own, bizarre ends is quite common on the internet).<\/p>\n

Nor did Machiavelli write, \u2018Never to attempt to win by force what can be won by deception,\u2019 in The Prince<\/em>. That may be paraphrased from The Discourses, Book III: 40<\/em>, or Book II: 13<\/em>. It is more likely to derive from an entirely different source: The Art of War<\/em> by Sun-Tzu. This misquote is popular on those faux-quote sites, but it isn’t one of his maxims. I wrote about that mis-quote<\/a> last year. It still irks me to see it online today.<\/p>\n

In the comment following that previous post, I wrote about another popular – and very wrong – internet meme attributed to Machiavelli: “I\u2019m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”<\/p>\n

That line was actually said by US Republican Newt Gringrich, and is taken from a 1991 interview printed in the LA Times:<\/p>\n

Such jabs don\u2019t faze Gingrich. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course people are going to resent that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other things Machiavelli did NOT<\/strong> say include the following pseudo-quotes taken from various, inaccurate, un-moderated and never verified, quotation sites online. I spent a couple of hours yesterday poring over my texts to search for them, just to be sure. It’s tricky because there are so many translations available, but anyone who has actually read any of them will recognize fairly easily what is and is not his style:<\/p>\n