Book · 2004 · Philosophy
The prince
Second Edition
#105 of 16,685 books, ranked by how many different people bring it up on podcasts
- mentions
- 34
- people
- 19
- podcasts
- 15
- episodes
- 21
- critical mentions
- 0
If you have The Prince on your shelf, read it and remember it was written by somebody who was willing to give up anything to serve his country, and you'll see a very different Machiavelli come through.
Ada Palmer · Dwarkesh Podcast · Jun 2026 What they say about it
- Guide to power and leadership“how-to manuals like a gain and wield power”3
- Written in exile or after arrest“in exile writes The Prince”2
The best things said about it
And that is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince, which is kind of how-to manuals like a gain and wield power, collectively.
Machiavelli says, No. I'm going to stay, and I'm going to rot, and I'm going to write The Prince, which is my job application begging the new regime to bring me back and let me work for them and demonstrating my loyalty, and I'm going to send it to them and only them, them and my immediate friends.
Ada Palmer Dwarkesh Podcast · Jun 2026 I chose Machiavelli because he wrote the greatest book on leadership ever written, The Prince which advises you to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get ahead.
He's the founding father of political science. He talked about motivating people with fear, love, and hate. He's talking about it in The Prince.
So in the prince his most famous work i should say historious work he suggests that it is a prince who wishes to stay in power should as well as having an independent military force of his own citizens he should be parsimonious rather generous he should be cruel rather than compassionate.
Where and when it comes up
Mentions per year
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How it comes up
19 people who brought it up
Why people recommend it
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli is a classic 16th-century political treatise offering a pragmatic, unflinching guide on how political power is acquired, maintained, and wielded. Ada Palmer noted on the Dwarkesh Podcast that readers should approach the text with the context of Machiavelli's deep patriotism, recognizing it as the work of a man willing to sacrifice everything for his country, which reveals a vastly different side of the author. Throughout the same episode, Dwarkesh Patel and Ada Palmer discussed the political volatility of Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli's background as a bureaucratic diplomat, his dedication of the work to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, and the final chapter's analysis of the chaotic political landscape. Kevin Rudd referenced the book on The Ezra Klein Show while analyzing political strategies concerning ambition, the necessity of masking one's motives, and demonstrating loyalty before attaining power. Dr. Leanne ten Brinke also mentioned the text on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett while exploring the historical origins and naming of Machiavellianism as a psychological construct.
Every mention
Ada Palmer If you have The Prince on your shelf, read it and remember it was written by somebody who was willing to gi… 9
Discussed
“By the time he's writing The Prince, it's dozens, in fact, the majority of these places.”
Discussed
“So Machiavelli, when he's writing the last chapter of The Prince, is looking around and saying, "Okay, we have a perfect storm.”
Discussed
“Machiavelli says, "No. I'm going to stay, and I'm going to rot, and I'm going to write The Prince, which is my job application begging the new regime to bring me back and let me work for them and demonstrating my loyalty, and I'm going to send it to them and only them, them and my immediate friends.”
Discussed
“Mini thesis: every time there's a new information technology, there's a subsequent wave of censorship to try to censor the new technology, and a bajillion books get banned all at once.”
Discussed
“To me, I think even more fascinating than looking at either Old Nick, the fictitious Machiavellian villain, or Machiavelli the patriot, is to look at how did we double-image this?”
Recommended
“If you have The Prince on your shelf, read it and remember it was written by somebody who was willing to give up anything to serve his country, and you'll see a very different Machiavelli come through.”
Discussed
“We now have read more documents of the period and realize how people use these words.”
Discussed
“He is arrested, tortured, exiled, and in exile writes The Prince.”
Discussed
“If it's I love these people and I want to meet them and get to know about them, I either want to go to a dinner party at Diderot's house or I want to talk to Machiavelli, you know, late in his life about the importance of his work after he's written The Prince.”
Dwarkesh Patel Before Machiavelli writes The Prince, he's a bureaucratic diplomat. 4
Discussed
“He writes The Prince.”
Discussed
“Before Machiavelli writes The Prince, he's a bureaucratic diplomat.”
Discussed
“Doesn't it contradict what he was saying in The Prince about how you should never rise with the help of great powers, for even in success you have empowered somebody who is stronger than you and at whose mercy you are?”
Discussed
“I think one misconception of Machiavelli that I had, because I had not read these books before, is that he says the means don't matter, the end matters.”
Alexander Lee so in the prince um his most famous work i should say historious work he suggests that it is a prince who w… 2
Discussed
“so in the prince um his most famous work i should say historious work he suggests that it is a prince who wishes to stay in power should as well as having um an independent military force of his own citizens”
Discussed
“so in the prince his most famous work i should say historious work he suggests that it is a prince who wishes to stay in power should as well as having an independent military force of his own citizens he should be parsimonious rather generous he should be cruel rather than compassionate”
Charlie Kirk But I was doing a lot of thinking about this over the weekend, and I was rereading the prints and rereading… 2
Discussed
“I want you to think back to Niccolio Machiavelli. Niccolio Machiavelli wrote The Prince. Was it 1522? Let me see how good I am at this. No, 1534. Let me see. We're doing a fact check here. You're going to have to say in my ear, Andrew, whether I was right. What year was that written? 1532. I was off”
Discussed
“But I was doing a lot of thinking about this over the weekend, and I was rereading the prints and rereading the driving motivations.”
Harvey Mansfield The longest chapter in Machiavelli’s two great works, The Prince and The Discourses on Livy, is the chapter… 2
Discussed
“The longest chapter in Machiavelli’s two great works, The Prince and The Discourses on Livy, is the chapter on conspiracy.”
Discussed
“You can deify fortune if you like, call it Lady Fortune, as he does in The Prince.”
Darryl Cooper Because when you think about it, if you go back to think about like, in Machiavelli's The Prince, right? 1
Discussed
“Because when you think about it, if you go back to think about like, in Machiavelli's The Prince, right?”
David Buss this actually came from originally from the book The Prince which is one of these classic books where um th… 1
Discussed
“this actually came from originally from the book The Prince which is one of these classic books where um there's an advisor to the prince who's advising him on all these”
General Robert Spalding Anyway, even as they say even Sun Tzu is not Machiavelli, is really the Prince, is really where I think the… 1
Discussed
“Anyway, even as they say even Sun Tzu is not Machiavelli, is really the Prince, is really where I think they think that they're trying to kind of, it's a modern version of the Prince because the Prince was much more about politics and much less about warfare.”
Graeme Garrard it was only after that that he wrote his his books the books for which he's most famous the prince for example 1
Discussed
“it was only after that that he wrote his his books the books for which he's most famous the prince for example”
Jack Posobiec there's a line and I'm gonna paraphrase it from Machiavelli's the prince 1
Discussed
“there's a line and I'm gonna paraphrase it from Machiavelli's the prince”
Jordan Harbinger so I definitely can identify with that last but not least you've mentioned that you would eventually someda… 1
Discussed
“so I definitely can identify with that last but not least you've mentioned that you would eventually someday maybe like to rewrite Machiavelli the prince for modern day Silicon Valley what would some of the big changes be from that book”
Jordan Peterson He did something very clever; he went into the books of Nicolo Machiavelli, who was an advisor to politicia… 1
Discussed
“He did something very clever; he went into the books of Nicolo Machiavelli, who was an advisor to politicians way back when, and he took the statements, administered them to undergraduate students, and simply asked them how much they agreed with these statements.”
Kevin Rudd If we've looked at our Machaveli carefully in the prince, Machaveli often speaks of the need to mask one's… 1
Discussed
“If we've looked at our Machaveli carefully in the prince, Machaveli often speaks of the need to mask one's own ambitions and to mask one's own ideas while being a loyal servant of the prince of the time before you yourself end up in power.”
Leanne ten Brinke And that is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote "The Prince", which is kind of how-to manuals like a… 1
Discussed
“And that is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote "The Prince", which is kind of how-to manuals like a gain and wield power, collectively.”
Robert Greene And then um he aligned himself with the Republic of Florence... he wrote a book called The Prince, right? 1
Discussed
“And then um he aligned himself with the Republic of Florence... he wrote a book called The Prince, right?”
Ryan Holiday You know, he writes the prince, so obviously he's about tyranny and power and control. 1
Discussed
“You know, he writes the prince, so obviously he's about tyranny and power and control.”
Sarah Paine I'll give you some Machiavelli on this one. He's the founding father of political science. He talked about… 1
Discussed
“I'll give you some Machiavelli on this one. He's the founding father of political science. He talked about motivating people with fear, love, and hate. He's talking about it in The Prince.”
Shilo Brooks I chose Machiavelli because he wrote the greatest book on leadership ever written, The Prince which advises… 1
Discussed
“I chose Machiavelli because he wrote the greatest book on leadership ever written, The Prince which advises you to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get ahead.”
Vejas Liulevicius It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli's "The Prince." 1
Discussed
“It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli's "The Prince."”
Mentioned on the show without a named speaker1
Discussed
“Nicolo Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance Diplomat who was Infamous for his 1513 book The Prince A Treatise on how to acquire power and keep it”
Also mentioned in the same episodes
Other mentions (10: passing, ad reads, own books)
Passing
“he went to Harvard he was probably reading the law and reading the prince right”
Passing
“She nearly cried when we showed her the whiteness contract from that children's book, and I got her to inadvertently argue that Derrick Chauvin should've should have never been convicted and should be released from prison!”
Passing
“He said, 'The Tree of Liberty must be fertilized with the blood of tyrants and patriots.'”
Passing
“Machiavelli who's somebody that not maybe not everybody will be familiar with as you know the the great theorist of republics they think of him as the kind of real politics scheming you know author of The Prince”
Plugged
“These are extraordinary skills, and sometimes I felt like I was writing Machiavelli volume two called 'The Princess.'”
Plugged
“She just doesn't think it's anybody's business, and that, in fact, here's another lesson from Machiavelli volume two is if you don't give it all away to the public, you know, that liberates a large part of you; that frees a large part of you to actually maintain life as a normal human, which she's about as normal a human”
Ad read
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Ad read
“so you can consume everything from the future of capitalism uh to the prince by machiavelli”
Ad read
“or you can order older ones like the prince by machiavelli”
Passing
“paraphrasing ol machi read the prints”