Machiavelli counseled princes to adopt beastly cunning to survive politics.

Evidence

By adopting animal-like cunning and manipulative methods, a prince could meet the enemy on its own terms. “A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 552

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Machiavelli derived political rules from objective conditions of struggle, not ethics; Machiavelli reframed fortune as circumstance and virtu as human capacity — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1469

Broader Connections

• Machiavelli derived political rules from objective conditions of struggle, not ethics #corroborates (0.78)
• Machiavelli reframed fortune as circumstance and virtu as human capacity #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1469