Explain Machiavelli's fundamental claim about the nature of politics, using your own words as if clarifying it for someone unfamiliar with his work.

From the book

Title: Anti-Machiavel by Frederick II of Prussia --- Metadata --- Title: Anti-Machiavel by Friedrich II, King of Prussia Description: Machiavelli's name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he advised most famously in his work, The Prince. He claimed that his experience and reading of history showed him that politics have always been played with deception, treachery, and crime. --- Text --- ← The New International Encyclopædia ( 1902 ) edited by Daniel Coit Gilman , Harry Thurston Peck and Frank Moore Colby → related portals : Reference Works Shortcut : NIE Disclaimer for this…

nd the Greek wars, no regular distribution of land among the destitute citizens had taken place for upward of a century. Numerous military colonies had indeed been founded in the conquered districts, and in this way many of the poorer Romans or their allies had been provided for: but there still remained large territories, the property of the State, which, instead of being divided among the poorer members of the State, were entered upon and brought into cultivation by the rich capitalists, many of whom thus came to hold thousands of jugera. instead of the five hundred allowed by the Licinian…

unpopular for a time, but did not permanently check the growth of his influence in Brandenburg, which became very great. He wrote several theological treatises, now forgotten, but he will always be remembered for his collection of German proverbs, Die gemeinen deutschen Sprüchwörter mit ihrer Auslegung (1592), a work of native humor, morality, and patriotism that has endeared him to the heart of scholarly Germany.

s morales et politiques (1849), a volume of political and nioral aphorisms in the style of the Maximes of Rochefoucauld. Though her moral laxily made her the subject of much unpleasant notoriety, the Comtesse d'Agoult's salon was, for many years, the rendezvous of many leading statesmen, poets, critics, painters, and musicians. There Alfred de Vigny and Sainte-Beuve were frequently seen; there Ponsard read his tragedy of Lucrèce for the first time; and there Prince Liehnowski appeared between his adventures in the Carlist War and his murder by the rabble at Frankfort. During the period from…

rs, also, that the right to enjoy the public lands in this temporary way was confined to the old burghers or patricians. This, taken in conjunction with the tendency, strong at all times, of larger possessions to swallow up smaller, kept up an ever-increasing number of landless commons, whose destitution and degradation came from time to time to such a pitch that alleviation was necessary to prevent the very dissolution of the State. It is easy, however, to see what motive the patricians, as a body, had to oppose all such measures, since it was their interest, though not their right, to keep…