1001Philosophers

Niccolo Machiavelli vs Plato on Knowledge

Plato's political philosophy is grounded in the philosopher-ruler's knowledge of the eternal Forms — most importantly the Form of the Good — and treats political knowing as continuous with metaphysics and ethics. Machiavelli abandons the metaphysical framework altogether: political knowledge is the disenchanted analysis of how human beings actually behave in conditions of competing power, and the prince's knowing is more like the soldier's or the surgeon's than the philosopher's.

About this topic

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. Philosophers have asked what distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion, whether it requires certainty or can be probabilistic, and how perception, reason, memory, and testimony each contribute. Ancient skeptics challenged the possibility of knowledge altogether, while rationalists located its source in reason and empiricists in experience. Contemporary epistemology investigates justification, reliability, and the social conditions under which beliefs count as knowing.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Niccolo Machiavelli vs Plato comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Knowledge quotes hub.

Representative quotes on knowledge

Niccolo Machiavelli on knowledge

  • “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

    A variant translation of: "And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him." - The Prince (1513), Ch. 22

  • “Letter to Francesco Vettori (10 December 1513), as translated by James Atkinson, in Prince Machiavelli (1976), p. 19”

    When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse wi

  • “In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.”

    From an undated letter to Piero Soderini (translated here by Dr. Arthur Livingston), in The Living Thoughts of Machiavelli, by Count Carlo Sforza, published by Cassell, London (1942), p. 85

  • “Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

    The Prince (1513), Ch. 3

  • “The Prince (1513), Ch. 3”

    Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

All 10 Niccolo Machiavelli quotes on knowledge →

Plato on knowledge

  • “Philosophy begins in wonder.”

    155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377

  • “I shall assume that your silence gives consent .”

    435b

  • “If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known —if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist— I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.”

    440a–b

  • “155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377”

    Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

  • “Perception and knowledge could never be the same.”

    186e

All 12 Plato quotes on knowledge →

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