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It was a daring political move that the exiled Niccolo Machiavelli, his career in ruin, made in 1512 from his family farm south of Florence. He had sent a short treatise, ‘The Prince’ (Il Principe), as an offering of counsel to the most powerful man in Florence, Lorenzo (called ‘the Magnificent’) de Medici, the man who himself had ordered Machiavelli’s dismissal and exile. The cover letter is as masterly as the treatise. ‘Take this little gift,’ Machiavelli wrote, ‘in the spirit I send it, and if you read it diligently you will discover in it my urgent wish that you reach the eminence that fortune and your other great qualities promise you.’

Renaissance sycophancy aside, it is held that this letter was Machiavelli’s pitch for employment with the Medici family. He closed by citing his reduced condition and couching a veiled plea, ‘And . . . you will realize the extent to which, undeservedly, I have to endure the great and unremitting malice of fortune.’ It is an irony and a contradiction that ‘The Prince,’ the classic handbook on power politics and the guide to gaining and maintaining that power, should have owed its birth to the collapse of the author’s political career.

Jay Dixit in Psychology Today:

‘If the jester’s jokes are based on sound ideas, he becomes the thinker, the philosopher,’ George Carlin said, ‘and if he uses dazzling language, he becomes a poet, too.’ More than any comic in memory, Carlin achieved this transmutation—as much cultural essayist as comedian, beloved not just for his jokes but also for the rhythm and poetry of his words. Nine days before his death, he spoke to PT. Sadly, the two-hour interview would be his last. For an extended version, visit [here].

On experience. I’ve been doing this 50 years. By this time it’s all second nature. It’s all a machine—the observation, the immediate evaluation of the observation, the mental filing of it, writing it down. A 20-year-old has a limited amount of data. At 70, the matrix is more textured and has more contours to it. Observations are compared against a much richer data set.

On his gift for language. My grandfather was a New York City policeman. During his adult life, he wrote out Shakespeare’s tragedies longhand just for the joy it gave him. My mother had a great gift for language. My father was an after-dinner speaker, a great raconteur. They both were very funny and gifted verbally. The Irish have a genetic tradition, it seems, an affinity for language and expression. I got that. As the Irish say: ‘You don’t lick it off the rocks, kid.’ It comes in the blood.