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Who really said it

It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting

Written by Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527 · Florentine political philosopher & diplomat
Verified Free to reuse

From ‘Il Principe’ (‘The Prince’), Chapter 17, written c. 1513 and first published 1532. This exact English wording is Luigi Ricci’s 1903 translation ↗ — the underlying idea is authentically Machiavelli’s.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 17 (trans. Luigi Ricci, 1903)

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Prince (Il Principe), ch. 17
Written / published
Written c. 1513; first published 1532 (posthumous)
Translation
English wording from Luigi Ricci, 1903
Chapter
“Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether it is Better to be Loved than Feared”

The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain.

Luigi Ricci’s 1903 English translation of ‘Il Principe’, ch. 17. “Wanting” here means lacking or absent.

The Prince (Ricci translation), Chapter 17 on Wikisource

How we verified this

Public domain

The Italian original of ‘Il Principe’ (first published 1532) is long in the public domain, and Luigi Ricci’s English translation was first published in 1903 — well before 1931 — so this specific rendering is also public domain in the United States.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

A real quote, often mangled

The attribution to Machiavelli is correct — but the line circulates in many altered forms, and the popular version is usually a loose paraphrase rather than this precise wording.

“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” paraphrase

This truncated form swaps Ricci’s “much safer” for “better” and “if one of the two has to be wanting” for “if you cannot be both.” It captures the sense but is not the wording of any single standard translation; Ricci’s actual text ↗ reads differently.

The “feared, not loved” slogan context stripped

Machiavelli immediately qualifies the line, warning that a prince must avoid being hated even while feared — a nuance dropped when the sentence is quoted as a standalone maxim, as the full chapter shows ↗.

The words are genuinely Machiavelli’s; this exact English form is Luigi Ricci’s 1903 translation of ‘The Prince’, ch. 17 ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince’ around 1513, after the collapse of the Florentine republic he had served returned the Medici to power and cost him his post. The book’s advice — that a ruler should be guided by what works rather than by conventional virtue — made his name a byword for cold political calculation.

In Chapter 17 he weighs whether a prince should court love or fear. Because human loyalty is fickle, he argues, fear is the more reliable foundation — yet he tempers this at once, insisting the prince must never become hated.

It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting.

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Power Leadership

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Prince (Ricci), Ch. 17en.wikisource.org

The Luigi Ricci 1903 translation containing this exact wording
Machiavelli — sourced quotesen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote entry listing the line in its sourced section, cited to The Prince ch. 17
The Prince (Marriott) full texten.wikisource.org

An alternative public-domain translation for comparing renderings of ch. 17
The Prince — Lit2Go, Ch. 17etc.usf.edu

University of South Florida full-text of the chapter with audio
The Prince — Standard Ebooksstandardebooks.org

Clean public-domain edition of the Marriott translation

The true author

About Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

1469–1527 · Florentine political philosopher, diplomat & author of The Prince

Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, historian and political theorist whose 1513 treatise Il Principe (‘The Prince’) became the founding text of modern political realism. Written after the Medici returned to power and stripped him of office, it advises rulers on acquiring and holding power by any effective means. Chapter 17 — on cruelty, clemency, and whether it is better to be loved or feared — is the source of this line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Niccolò Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’, ch. 17, trans. Luigi Ricci (London: Oxford University Press, 1903). Original ‘Il Principe’ written c. 1513, first published 1532.

MLA (9th ed.)

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by Luigi Ricci, Oxford University Press, 1903.

APA (7th ed.)

Machiavelli, N. (1903). The Prince (L. Ricci, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1532)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-much-safer-to-be-feared-than-loved-if-one-of-the-two

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