With "The Prince," Machiavelli made his name synonymous with intrigue and cunning for all time. His instructions to the Prince, on achieving and maintaining power, by any and all means available, became the archetypical philosophy of The Ends Justify The Means.

Machiavelli advocated that political expediency supersedes morality and that success, by any means, is its own justification. His cold, calculating logic sweeps aside and dismisses all arguments against the use of every manner of deceit and dishonesty for a ruler to achieve his ends on the basis that those ends, once...