Machiavelli's The Prince
Cited in Chapter VI of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One’s Own Arms And Ability) Fra Girolamo Savonarola was seen by Machiavelli as an incompetent, ill-prepared, and 'unarmed prophet', unlike 'Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus' (Machiavelli's The Prince)
Of Savonarola, Machiavelli wrote:
"If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long — as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe."
Read more about this topic: Girolamo Savonarola
Famous quotes containing the words machiavelli and/or prince:
“The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
“Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)