Being an atheist and an armchair philosopher, I've always heard reference made to Machiavelli, usually with the quote: "The ends justifies the means." And often in a rather negative context.
I decided one day to find out if Machiavelli ever REALLY wrote that (he did not, but…) and read his book, The Prince. I was amazed and shocked to find within those pages the writing of a thoroughly reasonable, sensible, razor-sharp mind. Machiavelli was cursed by his times and ideas and is remembered, in my humble opinion, very unjustly. I ended up reading, and siding with, Isiah Berlin's fantastic essay The Question of Machiavelli and have been a fan of Machiavelli ever since.
I wrote this "book" about the aphorisms attributed to Machiavelli in response to the many, many people whom I talked to Machiavelli about answering me with, "But he said….!" Because, often, he did NOT say any such thing. A Princely Primer goes through a long list of sayings attributed to Machiavelli and either supports or refutes them using Machiavelli's OWN writings. Yes, folks, I parsed BOTH The Prince and Discourses and I lived to tell about it.
This PDF is freely available; it's not very sophisticated self-publishing, but then, I just did this for fun. Hope you enjoy it!
A Princely Primer
The Wisdom of Machiavelli
By KimBooSan
