[SMS: BUT some have, (more than Machiavelli could ever have imagined in our technocratic world) at the expense of millions of lives and the destruction of God-given rights and freedoms as this Voices blog exposes; as we are daily witnessing in 2021.]
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*Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince (Kindle Locations 932-935). Personal Development Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ... 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian diplomat, philosopher, politician, historian and writer who lived during the Renaissance. He is best known for The Prince (Il Principe), written about 1513.[5] He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.[6] For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is of high importance to historians and scholars.[7] He worked as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
For this blogger's view about ideas of expediency attributable to Machiavelli see: https://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2014/02/niccolo-mockiavelli.html and consider his words as quoted in Burnham, James. The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (p. 6). Lume Books. Kindle Edition as noted in Voices ... #099 and repeated here:
Machiavelli: “I come now to the last branch of my charge: that I teach princes villainy, and how to enslave. If any man will read over my book … with impartiality and ordinary charity, he will easily perceive that it is not my intention to recommend that government or those men there described to the world, much less to teach men how to trample upon good men, and all that is sacred and venerable upon earth, laws, religion, honesty, and what not. If I have been a little too punctual in describing these monsters in all their lineaments and colours, I hope mankind will know them, the better to avoid them, my treatise being both a satire against them, and a true character of them …” from a Letter to a Friend .