“Let a prince therefore act to conquer and to maintain the state: the means will always be judged honorable and praised by everyone.”Niccolò Machiavelli · Principele · 1532 · capitolul 18
Success rewrites the past: the same deeds become vision if he won and crimes if he lost.
Machiavelli describes a mechanism of collective hypocrisy: moral judgment of means is written after the fact. When a ruler succeeds, his cruelties and deceptions are reinterpreted as vision and firmness; when he fails, the same acts become crimes. A concrete example is history written by the winners: a usurper who succeeds is called a founding father, while one who fails is called a tyrant.
Why it matters It helps one read critically the political and business rhetoric that justifies any means by success.