Interesting how everyone always focuses (almost) entirely on The Prince and (almost) completely ignores his Discourses on Livy. Here's the thing: if you read the Discourses first, Machiavelli comes off as a staunch republican — and then when you read The Prince you just have to conclude that it could only be a brilliant satire, subtly aimed at Lorenzo Medici, because there is really no way he was not writing it tongue-in-cheek. And yet people take it completely at the face value and think that Machiavelli was keen on giving advice to the tyrant on how to tyrannize people more efficiently because he thought it was just the greatest way to run the world.