The Truth Behind the Leader Machiavelli once wrote in a letter, "My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved." A prime model of application can be seen in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. In the story a group of British schoolboys become marooned …showed first 75 words of 1430 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1430 total…what he wanted, absolute power. Absolute control would have been short-lived because the realization would soon come to the boys that Jack's society would be short-lived. In reply to Machiavelli, Lorenzo di Medici of Florence once stated, "But you should know that this independence upon which I insist so strongly raises more than anything the authority of the master, and that it alone shows that he is governing them instead of being governed by them."