Author of The Prince, father of realpolitik
A statesman and thinker of Renaissance Florence. In The Prince he for the first time stripped politics of morality and religion, coolly discussing a bare question: how a prince may seize and hold power. He said plainly that a prince is "safer to be feared than loved," and that for the state’s survival one must sometimes use deceit and cruelty. This "realpolitik" shocked later ages, and "Machiavellian" became a byword for scheming — though he himself lived out his life in poverty, loyal to the republic.
The Prince saddled Machiavelli with a name for "teaching wickedness," and "Machiavellian" is still a synonym for sinister scheming. But many scholars note that he was in fact a staunch republican, and wrote the book partly to seek a post, partly to record with a cold eye the chaos of Italy he had lived through. He was not preaching evil, but the first to dare state how politics really works — rather than how it "ought" to.
Whether The Prince teaches scheming, or is a republican’s cold record of political reality, or even carries hidden irony, is long debated; this site states the text and the "misread" dispute.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.