What does this text remind you of? Identify and analyze a main concern in this text and discuss the relationship between what you have just read and something else you have read or experience.
Is it better to be loved than to be feared, or the reverse? I answer that a prince should wish for both. But because it is difficult to reconile them, I hold that it is much more secure to be feared than to be loved, if one of them must be given up. The reason for my answer is that one must say of men generally that they are ungrateful, mutable, pretenders and dissemblers, prone to avoid danger, thirsty for gain. So long as you benefit them they are all yours.... But when need comes upon you, they turn around. So if a prince has relied wholly on their words, and is lacking in other preparations, he fails. For friendships that are gained with money, and not with greatness and nobility of spirit, are deserved but not possessed