I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles
Not Machiavelli’s words — a later condensation of a 1629 legendNiccolò Machiavelli1469–1527 · Florentine diplomat, political theorist and author of The Prince
No work of Machiavelli’s contains this sentence. Wikiquote files it under Disputed and explains it as a “pithy” condensation of the so-called Machiavelli’s Dream — a deathbed vision story that was not published until Étienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origène (1629), a century after he died. The exact English wording quoted today is printed, with no source given, in Frederic Rowland Marvin’s The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women ↗ (1901), p. 178.
“I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles” Not Machiavelli's words. "I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven..." is a later English condensation of a legend first published in Étienne Binet's Du salut d'Origène (Paris, 1629), a century after Machiavelli died; in Binet's version the damned he prefers are Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch and Tacitus. This exact wording is printed in Frederic Rowland Marvin, The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), 178. Via Quotle.info.
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Evoking the world of Niccolò Machiavelli — Florentine diplomat, political theorist & author of The Prince. Theme: "I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
Where this wording actually appears
This exact wording
The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women, p. 178
Published
New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901 — compiled by Frederic Rowland Marvin
Underlying anecdote
Du salut d’Origène (Paris, 1629), by the Jesuit Étienne Binet
In Machiavelli’s own works
Not found — listed under Disputed on Wikiquote
Machiavelli, or Macchiavelli, sometimes Machiavel (Nicholas, a celebrated atheist, and the author of “The Prince”), 1469–1530. “I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles.”
Marvin, Last Words (1901), p. 178
The entry as printed on p. 178. Marvin gives no source for the words, and his dates are wrong: Machiavelli died in 1527, not 1530.
Nothing in Machiavelli’s writings matches it. Wikiquote places the sentence in its Disputed section and describes it as the “Dream” story “commonly condensed into a more pithy form.” Wikiquote, Niccolò Machiavelli ↗
The full dream account first appears in Étienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origène (1629), where the ragged poor are heaven’s citizens and the damned senate includes Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch and Tacitus — and Machiavelli says he would far rather be in hell talking statecraft with them. Binet’s volume on Google Books ↗
The closest thing to a contemporary trace is Giovambattista Busini’s 1549 letter to Benedetto Varchi, which says only that the dying Machiavelli told his much-celebrated dream to Filippo Strozzi, Francesco del Nero, Iacopo Nardi and others, and died joking. No words are recorded. Busini’s letters ↗
The English sentence itself turns up in a 1901 anthology of famous last words, sourceless and with the wrong death year attached. Marvin, The Last Words (1901) ↗
✓Public domain
The earliest printing of this exact wording that we could confirm is Frederic Rowland Marvin’s The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), long out of copyright in the United States; the free Project Gutenberg text is derived from it. The anecdote it condenses, from Étienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origène (1629), is older still. An earlier printing may exist that we did not find, but any such printing would also predate 1931.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How a Jesuit’s anecdote became Machiavelli’s last words
Three separate things get welded together here: a dream Machiavelli is said to have told, a story about that dream written down a century later by a hostile Jesuit, and an English one-liner that condenses the story while changing its point.
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This exact wordingFrederic Rowland Marvin’s The Last Words (1901) earliest printing we could confirm
The sentence appears verbatim on p. 178 of Marvin’s compendium, with no source cited, introducing Machiavelli as “a celebrated atheist” and dating him “1469–1530” — he died in 1527. Wikiquote points to the same book as the pithy form of the story. Read the entry ↗
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The underlying anecdoteÉtienne Binet, French Jesuit, 1629 a century after the deathbed
Wikiquote notes the account of the “Dream” “was not published until a century after his death, in Etienne Binet’s Du salut d’Origene (1629)” and transcribes the French. See the Disputed section ↗
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The cast of the joke“Popes, kings, and princes” swapped in
In Binet’s version the majestic damned Machiavelli would rather join are Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch and Tacitus, debating affairs of state; the ones he rejects are ragged, famished poor. The modern line replaces philosophers with popes and kings, and turns the paupers into “beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles” — an anticlerical gag rather than a jab at worldly wisdom. Compare the 1629 text ↗
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Circulating short formQuote sites and social posts further trimmed
The version most shared today drops two words and a noun: “In the former I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles” — no “place,” no “hermits.” Goodreads carries it that way with no book credited. See the listing ↗
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A different saying entirelyMark Twain not the same quote
“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company” is a separate joke with its own history: Quote Investigator gives the earliest full match to Ben Wade in 1885 and records Twain’s notebook version around 1889–90, with no mention of Machiavelli. Read the investigation ↗
✓Something real sits under the legend — Busini’s 1549 letter says Machiavelli told his “famous dream” to friends as he lay dying and went out joking — but no source records these words, and Binet’s 1629 version says something rather different. Wikiquote, Disputed ↗
Context
Why the fake outlived the fact
Machiavelli really did tell a strange dream as he was dying — that much has a near-contemporary trace. A letter written in 1549 by Giovambattista Busini to the historian Benedetto Varchi records that, as the illness worsened, Machiavelli “told his famous dream” to Filippo Strozzi, Francesco del Nero, Iacopo Nardi and others, and then died “telling jokes to the last.” Busini does not say what was in the dream, and he does not quote a single word of it.
The content only arrives in 1629 — eighty years after Busini’s letter, and a century after Machiavelli died — and from an unfriendly direction: a French Jesuit, Étienne Binet, writing about who is saved and who is damned. In Binet’s telling Machiavelli is shown a small band of ragged, starving wretches — these are the citizens of paradise — and then a vast senate of grave men debating affairs of state, among them Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch and Tacitus, who are the damned. Asked which company he would join, he picks hell, for the conversation.
Busini recorded the dream in 1549 without its content. Nobody printed what was in it until 1629 — a century after Machiavelli died.
What changed between 1629 and 1901
Binet’s joke is about the classical mind — wisdom of this world against the blessed poor. The version that circulates now swaps that cast entirely: hell fills up with “popes, kings, and princes,” and heaven is left to “beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles.” That is a different gag, aimed at the Church rather than at philosophy, and it is the one that fits the modern picture of Machiavelli.
The line also acquired a genre. Marvin’s 1901 book is a compendium of famous last words, so the sentence arrives already framed as something Machiavelli said on his deathbed — a framing no source supports. Marvin introduces him as “a celebrated atheist” and dates him 1469–1530; he actually died in 1527.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1469–1527 · Florentine diplomat, political theorist & author of The Prince
Machiavelli ran the Florentine Republic’s second chancery from 1498 to 1512, handling official correspondence and diplomacy and organising a citizen militia that took Pisa in 1509. Ousted when the Medici returned, he wrote The Prince and the Discourses in enforced retirement. He died in Florence on 21 June 1527 — and within a generation his name had become a byword for godless cunning, which is precisely the soil in which a story about him cheerfully choosing hell took root.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest confirmed printing
Frederic Rowland Marvin, The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), 178 — the earliest printing of this exact wording we were able to confirm. The underlying anecdote is Étienne Binet, Du salut d’Origène (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1629), 359–61, as cited by Wikiquote.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-desire-to-go-to-hell-and-not-to-heaven-in-the-former/