We are indignant because
the people who
are with us
are so cunning,
that they consider
themselves smarter than
we are
La Rochefoucauld
My goalÄS to make
you scream my name.
Give me what want,
but make me work for
Olivia Cunning
L meetvilletom
My goalÄS to make
you scream my name.
Give me what want,
but make me work for
Olivia Cunning
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
(T. S. Eliot)
Thought is so cunning,
so clever, that it distorts
everything for its own
convenience.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti —
KNOWLEDGE
WITHOUT JUSTICE
OUGHT TO BE CALLED
CUNNING RATHER
THAN WISDOM.
Plato
CT URE QUOTES . ear--
The cunning waste their pains;The
wise men vex their brains;But the
simpleton, oseek
gainS;With belly-full&Wanders
freeAs drifting boa upon the s
—Cao Xueqin
BE NEITHER SILLY,
NOR CUNNING,
BUT WISE
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
c TURE QUOTES .
I Have A Plan So Cunning You
Could Brush Your Teeth With It.
Blackadder II
The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering
fuel in vacant lots.
(T. S. Eliot)
THE WEAK IN
COURAGE IS
STRONG IN
CUNNING.
William Blake
English Poet
1757-1827
Appearances not only can be deceptive, as Machiavelli points out in Chapter XVIII: Concerning the Way in Which Princes Should Keep Faith, but appearances also should be deceptive. He was keenly aware, from his years as a diplomat, that there was one way a ruler should appear and another way a ruler should act. A little deception could go a long way:
Like Machiavelli wrote in Chapters 15 and 16, it’s fine to look like a good and compassionate ruler, but you have to act the way circumstances dictate to stay in power and maintain the state. Keeping your word simply for the sake of appearances isn’t very wise, especially if it threatens either your position or the state.
“Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.”
Machiavelli's instructions to diplomat Raffaello Girlami
A good ruler, as he wrote in The Art of War, must both,
“…love peace but know how to wage war…”
The Art of War: I, 12
That requires a more complex personality than most of us have. Machiavelli explains why we need it to be more than just ourselves: civilized people use the law to settle their differences, but the law doesn’t always work to our benefit. In that case, it’s prudent to put a bit of stick about and behave in a different, more forceful manner to get your way:
“There are two ways of fighting: one by the law, the other by force; the first method is natural to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently inadequate, it is necessary to resort to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to make use of both the nature of the beast and the nature of man… one cannot prevail without the other.”
The Fox and the Lion
Maybe you need some animal instincts to guide you. Machiavelli used the metaphor of the lion and the fox as the exemplary bestial natures to mimic. A lion is strong and brave, but not very cunning, and the fox is cunning and easily escapes snares, but isn’t very strong:
“A prince, therefore, who is forced to act like beast, ought to learn from the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against traps, and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves.”
The fox is not merely clever: it can recognize traps; it sees through the deceptions of others. Machiavelli suggests that the wolves aren’t just predators: they lay snares for the unwitting, too.
The lion doesn’t merely brawl; by its size and reputation, it keeps other predators at a distance. You can’t be one without being the other, and survive in the political wilderness.
You need to be a bit of both; cunning and strength, fraud and force combined:
“Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares, and like a lion to terrify the wolves.Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand matters.”
When you can’t win your argument by civilized debate, you may try a little arm twisting.
Strength alone won’t accomplish everything, however. No matter how many the wolves, people will just see you as a bully. You need some craft to mix it with.
This is an important concept throughout The Prince: situational ethics. Machiavelli was not a blind ideologue, cleaving to one path, or a moralist who demanded rulers obey fixed precepts. He recognized that a ruler had to behave as circumstances dictated. Be bold when boldness is required; cautious when caution is prudent. Be benevolent when times require it; be cruel when cruelty is necessitated. Be able and willing to change.
Do what is required to stay in power and protect the state. Be both cunning and be strong: the fox and the lion combined. But be careful how you present your inner fox: cleverness is not as well appreciated as strength in today’s anti-intellectual climate.
You need to be the more cunning fox in a municipality where the people are the stronger force, and the more powerful lion where the staff are the stronger, as you see in the next chapter.
Machiavelli reasoned that, acting as a fox, a ruler cannot – and should not – keep his or her word when either it places the ruler (and thus the state) at a disadvantage, or the reasons for the promises no longer exist. Your word is not your bond: it’s a choice you make.
“A wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep his promises when such observance would place him at a disadvantage, and when the reasons for which he gave his word no longer exist.”
Basically he’s saying it’s okay to lie under some circumstances. We all know that some campaign promises are lies. Politicians make them knowing they cannot or will not fulfill them, but they’re what the public wants to hear. No one ever got elected promising to raises taxes, to cut services, or to increase municipal spending. You get elected by promising the opposite.
Voters expect campaign promises to be a bit dodgy, and that some just will fall by the wayside once the election is over. Machiavelli, however, says that even off the hustings, it’s still okay to break your word.
He doesn’t say it’s right to make a promise knowing you have no intention of keeping it. Rather he’s saying that, if you make a promise you intended to keep, and later renege on it, it’s not really lying if there’s a good justification for breaking it. Then hypocrisy becomes a valid political survival technique.
He’s not saying it’s okay to lie all the time, either, or to break every promise, just when it’s necessary to do so. And that depends on the circumstances. What effect will keeping your promise have on the welfare of your municipality? Will that new arena you promised benefit people more than the higher taxes will hurt them?
You can get away with breaking your promises if that’s what prudence and the situation dictate you should do. Machiavelli justifies this by saying that, if people were always good, and everyone kept their word to you and to everyone else, this would be a bad rule. But since,
“…they are bad, and will not keep their word to you, you too are not bound to keep yours to them.”
Most people won’t keep faith with you because they are bound by their personal needs, while you have to see to the state’s as well as your own.
No ruler ever lacked excuses for breaking his or her word. But, Machiavelli acknowledges, even in a world where no one can be trusted, you can’t succeed as an outright cad. So you need to hide your real intentions.
The Great Pretender
Obviously you can’t walk around telling people you plan to break your promises, so you have to convince them you intend to follow through. This will work because people are willing to be deceived:
“It is necessary to know how to conceal this characteristic well, and to be a great pretender and dissembler. Men are so simple, and so subject to prone to be won over by necessities, that a deceiver will always find someone who is willing to be deceived.”
People who want to deceive will always find someone willing to be deceived. While he warns you to avoid flatterers (Chapter 23), it doesn’t hurt to be one yourself, if it helps convince others of your worth and sincerity.
As Machiavelli also wrote in The Discourses:
“Men deceive themselves in respect of their own affairs, and most of all in respect of those on which they are most bent; so that either from impatience or from self-deception, they rush upon undertakings for which the time is not ripe, and so come to an ill end.”
The Discourses: III, 8
Witter Bynner wrote that:
“Everywhere men yearn to be misled by magicians.”
Introduction to the Tao Teh Ching
In the same vein, we want to believe in our leaders and our politicians because that confirms we made the right decision to elect them. When we believe our leaders to be unfaithful and unjust, it reflects badly on our own judgment. So we are willing to be deceived by them.
“Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.”
Machiavelli's instructions to diplomat Raffaello Girlami
We’re disappointed when our leaders break their promises, maybe even angry, but we hold faith with them because to do otherwise would make us – not them – seem like fools.
“The worst that can happen is that the man to whom you have made a false promise is angry.”
All you need to be loved and respected by others, says Machiavelli, is the appearance of being good. That’s enough for people to love you:
“It is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have mentioned, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.”
You don’t actually have to be good, just look like it, and people will happily believe you are because it confirms their own wisdom for electing you. When they stop believing in their own fantasies about you, they will send you packing.
Actually being good all the time is harmful in the long run, he warns, and you need to know how not to be good – how to be bad – to survive:
“That to have them and always to observe them is harmful, and that to appear to have them is useful. It’s all very well to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so disposed that should you need to be otherwise from those qualities, you will be able to become the opposite.”
In other words, it’s all very well to appear good, but you have to be capable of being bad when necessary. When the time comes to act, you have to act as circumstances demand, not according to a fixed moral compass.
This concept set Machiavelli aside from his contemporaries.
Notice that he doesn’t say you have to be bad, just that you have to know how and when to be. How you act depends on circumstances.
Machiavelli understood that no one is wholly good and wholly bad. But, nonetheless, you should assume others are bad so you’re not surprised by them or their actions:
“Presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.”
The Discourses: I, 3
You cannot survive in politics if you assume all people are basically good, because you will always be disappointed in them. If you assume people are basically bad, they will never disappoint you. They may even pleasantly surprise and delight you by not being as bad as you expected.
Newcomers ride into office on promises of change and improvement. You can’t achieve any of these unless you know how and when to act the villain, and use some force to get your way:
“A prince, especially a new one, cannot exhibit all those qualities for which men are esteemed, because in order to maintain the state, the prince is often compelled to act contrary to loyalty, friendship, humanity, and religion.”
It’s great for your reputation to be seen sitting in the pew on Sunday morning. Or being a good party member and attending those boring riding meetings. Religion can also mean ideology of every sort. Political correctness is a religion itself.
Being good is the high road and everyone praises it. But, Machiavelli says, it’s okay to take the low road if no other viable option exists:
“It is necessary for him to flexible and ready to act accordingly as the circumstances and fortune demand it, yet he should not diverge from what is good if he can avoid doing so. But, if compelled to act bad by circumstances, then he must know how to do it.”
So talk the good talk even if you don’t walk the good talk. Let your appearance and speech be benign and gracious, tell them what they want to hear so the people will believe in you:
“A prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the… qualities, that he may appear to everyone who sees and hears him as a paragon of mercy, loyalty, humanity, integrity, and scrupulousness.”
Never question the popular ideology in public. Don’t go against the popular trends openly. Pretend to be just like everyone else.
Appearances Matter
Appearances, even when deceptive, matter because most people look at the surface, not into the depths:
“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because everybody can see you, but few can come close enough to touch you.”
What you can touch, what you can hold in your hand has more validity that what you see, because your eyes can be deceived. However, adds Machiavelli, because they can’t get close enough to touch you, everyone…
“…sees what you appear to be, but few really know what you are…”
Those who really know the fox that lies behind your mask of righteousness don’t dare oppose the many who think you’re that wonderful, compassionate person you appear to be.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, was the message to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and we say just that to the electorate about ourselves. Be the Wizard. Make your public persona something special.
On the other hand, you should pay attention to those who know you better: they are potential enemies. You will need to be the lion with them; roar a bit to make them fear your bite.
As long as you appear to be honest, upright and compassionate to the majority, everything you achieve will also appear as good as you pretend to be. Conversely, if you achieve good results, then people will think well of the methods you used to achieve them:
“The actions of all men, and especially of princes, for which there is no court of appeal, one judges by the result.”
Machiavelli gets more specific, throwing in a line about how much winning matters to the result:
“When a prince wins victories and upholds the state, his methods will always be considered honourable, and he will be praised by everybody. The common people are always impressed by what a thing seems to be and by results. In a world full of common people who applaud the prince’s achievements, only a few can see past appearances.”
The common people, wrote Machiavelli, are willingly deceived and are always impressed by both appearances and results, not necessarily the truth. Most people don’t look to causes, just the effects. Since they’re the majority, don’t worry about those few who see past appearances.
“So true it is that men are more taken by look and words than by actual services.”
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Cunning quotes
The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say;
but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
Life is a battle of wits, and many people have to fight it unarmed.
Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.
Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only
lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite
in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite.
Cunning surpasses strength.
Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Cunning is strength withheld.
Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to live today without being one. Let your
greatest cunning lie in covering up what looks like cunning.
Cunning has little honor.
Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but
for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but
she will not hate her work. I trust her.
You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.
Cunning is but the low mimic of wisdom.
Disguise your cunning. Like a billard ball that caroms several times before it hits its target,
your moves must be planned and developed in the least obvious way. By training yourself to
be indirect, you can thrive in the modern court, appearing the paragon of decency while
being the consummate manipulator.
The most cunning are the first caught.
It is to see the faults of others, but difficult to see once own faults. One shows the faults of
others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults as a cunning
gambler conceals his dice.
The cunning of women is strong, and the cunning of the devil is weak.
The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase
of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that
punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
Wit is better than cunning.
There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat in the pan;" which is,
when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him.
No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so
cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Watchfulness is the only guard against cunning. Be intent on his intentions. Many succeed in
making others do their own affairs, and unless you possess the key to their motives you may
at any moment be forced to take their chestnuts out of the fire to the damage of your own
fingers.
Cunning is followed by foolishness.
The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us - when
we feel helpless we feel miserable. No one wants less power; everyone wants more. In the
world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your
power moves. We have to seem fair and decent. So we need to be subtle - congenial yet
cunning, democratic yet devious.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
William Blake
From a dog's point of view his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog.
Mabel L. Robinson
Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those
things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Charles de Gaulle
Cunning is a short blanket--if you pull it over your face, you expose your feet.
Austin O'Malley
In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
Cynthia Ozick
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little
knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience
and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of
man.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical
cunning.
A. E. Housman
More are taken in by hope than by cunning.
Luc De Clapier
Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a
generous thing.
Alexander Pope