Socrates and Machiavelli both aspire to the same goal of achieving certain political objectives. Machiavelli, in The Prince, speaks of his desire to end political conflict through the establishment of order while Socrates, as described by Plato, apparently wishes for the government of his time to be replaced with a more just system. While the two historical figures are both very relevant to the concept of power and how to obtain it, they are polar opposites when it comes to the means by which they hope to achieve their personal ends. In The Prince, Machiavelli provides essential guidance on what a prince should look like and how he should interact with his subjects to ensure they are compliant and subservient. On the other hand, Socrates works in the marketplace to reveal truths so revealingly that he actually plants the seeds of political change in the children of those he interrogates. It can be said that Machiavelli's Prince and the Socratic Gadfly are involved in a cat and mouse game with each other since one of the Prince's main tools is deception while the gadfly's goal is to reveal falsehoods and the deception itself employed by the Prince so that people can see the world as it really is. Machiavelli's Prince in his purest form is a sort of perfect politician; must be totally objective regarding your specific situation; he must be 'like a lion and a fox', capable of frightening wolves and avoiding traps; and he must deceive his people not only in a way that makes them complacent and satisfied with him, but in a way that guarantees that he will not be captured. The Machiavellian prince also cannot feel any emotion as emotion would distort his view of the world. All these methods and qualities are Mac... half the paper... the resources to find and audit it. He was eventually caught and is now in prison as a result. I assume that if Madoff had known he was going to prison, he wouldn't have started the Ponzi scheme. In conclusion, although Hobbe's theory of human nature is baffling and sometimes even a little absurd, the theory is still understandable. There are hundreds of examples occurring every hour, from civil wars to Ponzi schemes, that demonstrate that human beings are untrustworthy because they are too aggressive, violent, demanding and selfish. From store looting to genocide in Africa, it is evident that humans revert to some parts of the natural man when a strong central authority is weakened, incompetent, or otherwise fails to enforce the laws. Therefore, although Hobbe's theory may seem outlandish at first glance, it is not entirely false.