Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli: "Among the most original thinkers of the Renaissance is a brilliant and slightly tragic figure, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, his name would be synonymous with deviousness, cruelty, and willfully destructive rationality; no thinker was every so demonized or misunderstood than Machiavelli. The source of this misunderstanding is his most influential and widely read treatise on government, The Prince, a remarkably short book that attempts to lay out methods to secure and maintain political power."

The Italian Niccolo Machiavelli had long career in government and was a philosopher, musician, poet, and playwright. He lived in Florence during the end of the middle ages. Machiavelli wrote his most famous work, The Prince in 1513, dedicating it to the powerful and wealthy Lorenzo De Medici.