"The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs"
About this Quote
The engine of the line is its elasticity. "Allies" can mean statesmen and parties, but also media owners, prosecutors you manage, business partners, and friendly institutions. In Berlusconi's hands, alliance is less about shared program than shared interest. The quote normalizes dependency: a prince is not a lonely strongman, he is a hub. That sounds modest, even civic. It also pre-justifies the sprawling networks that kept him afloat across scandals, collapses of governments, and reinventions of his own political brand.
"Responsibility" is the crucial euphemism. It recasts ambition as burden, power as public service, the accumulation of support as necessary for the common good. The subtext is pragmatic and faintly absolving: if the job is huge, the coalition must be huge; if the coalition is messy, blame the job. Read in context of Berlusconi's era of fragmented Italian party politics and his own media-fueled populism, the line is a manual for longevity: moral language on the surface, Machiavellian arithmetic underneath.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Berlusconi, Silvio. (2026, January 18). The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-political-tradition-of-ancient-thought-19230/
Chicago Style
Berlusconi, Silvio. "The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-political-tradition-of-ancient-thought-19230/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-political-tradition-of-ancient-thought-19230/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
