Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth of Power

"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." - Niccolò Machiavelli

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." - John Kenneth Galbraith

"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." - George Orwell

With one harsh insight, Machiavelli disrupted centuries of political theory.

Prior to him, politics was viewed as an elitist domain that involved aspiring ideal leaders who were guided by "divine knowing", and as an extension of ethics. It was philosophy in the clouds, a discussion of ideals separated from the grim realities of everyday life.

With a single stroke, Machiavelli ideas broke through this illusion. He declared that instead of pursuing the "imagined truth," he would now pursue the practical truth, the unadulterated mechanics of how power actually functions in the world.