"The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes"
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Greed gets a curious moral exemption when it wins. Machiavelli is carving out that uncomfortable double standard with the cold precision of someone who watched Italian city-states rise and fall on the appetites of princes. Wanting more, he concedes, is “natural and common” - not a sin, not even a vice worth sermonizing about. The real scandal is social: success retroactively launders desire into virtue. If you expand your power, territory, or wealth, you’re “praised rather than condemned,” no matter the wreckage underneath.
The pivot comes with “ability.” Machiavelli isn’t preaching moderation; he’s policing competence. The condemnation is reserved for those who “lack the ability” yet still chase accumulation “at all costs.” That phrase isn’t about lofty ethics so much as disastrous method: reckless wars, botched alliances, overreaching reforms, panicked cruelty. In his world, failure isn’t tragic; it’s evidence you misread the terrain, misjudged your strength, and endangered the state.
Subtext: morality is often just a scoreboard with better branding. Communities don’t reward purity; they reward outcomes. Machiavelli’s intent is diagnostic, not devotional: he’s teaching rulers to calculate desire against capacity, to know when ambition is strategy and when it’s delusion. The quote belongs to a Renaissance politics where legitimacy was fragile and the costs of miscalculation were immediate. It’s also unnervingly contemporary: we still celebrate “hustle” when it pays off, then moralize the same hunger as degeneracy when it collapses under its own incompetence.
The pivot comes with “ability.” Machiavelli isn’t preaching moderation; he’s policing competence. The condemnation is reserved for those who “lack the ability” yet still chase accumulation “at all costs.” That phrase isn’t about lofty ethics so much as disastrous method: reckless wars, botched alliances, overreaching reforms, panicked cruelty. In his world, failure isn’t tragic; it’s evidence you misread the terrain, misjudged your strength, and endangered the state.
Subtext: morality is often just a scoreboard with better branding. Communities don’t reward purity; they reward outcomes. Machiavelli’s intent is diagnostic, not devotional: he’s teaching rulers to calculate desire against capacity, to know when ambition is strategy and when it’s delusion. The quote belongs to a Renaissance politics where legitimacy was fragile and the costs of miscalculation were immediate. It’s also unnervingly contemporary: we still celebrate “hustle” when it pays off, then moralize the same hunger as degeneracy when it collapses under its own incompetence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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