feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Prince/section_23_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Prince.chapter 23
feat_summary_id: chapter 23
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 23", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210420060055/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/prince-machiavelli/summary/chapter-23", "summary": "This is a hard one. There are so many people around who will just want to kiss your butt. Think of paparazzi. Everyone wants a piece of you. So what to do? Here it is: get people, but only some people, i.e. your ministers, to understand that you want them to tell the truth. Only when you ask, though. Also, make sure they get that you are the decider here, not them. One Bishop, Luca Rainaldi, never got advice and he also never got anything done, because he was always changing his mind. Don't be like him. Get your advice and make your decisions. Remember that a good minister and good advice won't help you if you are a bad leader, because they will just take over. You have to be a good leader to begin with to take advantage of a good minister.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it
  is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless
  they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of
  whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own
  affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with
  difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they
  run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way
  of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that
  to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell
  you the truth, respect for you abates.
  
  Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the
  wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking
  the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires,
  and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and
  listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions.
  With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry
  himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more
  freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of
  these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be
  steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown
  by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls
  into contempt.
  
  I wish on this subject to adduce a modern example. Fra Luca, the man of
  affairs to Maximilian,(*) the present emperor, speaking of his majesty,
  said: He consulted with no one, yet never got his own way in anything.
  This arose because of his following a practice the opposite to the
  above; for the emperor is a secretive man--he does not communicate his
  designs to any one, nor does he receive opinions on them. But as in
  carrying them into effect they become revealed and known, they are
  at once obstructed by those men whom he has around him, and he, being
  pliant, is diverted from them. Hence it follows that those things he
  does one day he undoes the next, and no one ever understands what he
  wishes or intends to do, and no one can rely on his resolutions.
  
       (*) Maximilian I, born in 1459, died 1519, Emperor of the
       Holy Roman Empire. He married, first, Mary, daughter of
       Charles the Bold; after her death, Bianca Sforza; and thus
       became involved in Italian politics.
  
  A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he
  wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one
  from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be
  a constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the
  things of which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any
  consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be
  felt.
  
  And if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an impression
  of his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through the good
  advisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because
  this is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise
  himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his
  affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In
  this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long,
  because such a governor would in a short time take away his state from
  him.
  
  But if a prince who is not inexperienced should take counsel from more
  than one he will never get united counsels, nor will he know how to
  unite them. Each of the counsellors will think of his own interests, and
  the prince will not know how to control them or to see through them. And
  they are not to be found otherwise, because men will always prove untrue
  to you unless they are kept honest by constraint. Therefore it must be
  inferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of
  the wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good
  counsels.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 23
target: This is a hard one. There are so many people around who will just want to kiss your butt. Think of paparazzi. Everyone wants a piece of you. So what to do? Here it is: get people, but only some people, i.e. your ministers, to understand that you want them to tell the truth. Only when you ask, though. Also, make sure they get that you are the decider here, not them. One Bishop, Luca Rainaldi, never got advice and he also never got anything done, because he was always changing his mind. Don't be like him. Get your advice and make your decisions. Remember that a good minister and good advice won't help you if you are a bad leader, because they will just take over. You have to be a good leader to begin with to take advantage of a good minister.