Renaissance humanists

The three Renaissance humanists, Niccolo Machiavelli, Baldassare > Castiglione and Leon Battista Alberti, all believed that you should work > hard to become the best individual you could be. The main difference > between them was how one should go about meeting this goal. > Alberti believes the individual should live his life with the highest > moral standards. He thought you should never compromise this. It was all > right to become wealthy if you accomplished this by being a …

…to be successful you would have to be feared. He believed a > "nice > guy" would be taken advantage of. He believed you should never be afraid > to use the power you have over people to get what you want. > > All three writers had similar goals for their ideal person. They varied > from one extreme to the other, Alberti's high moral beliefs to > Machiavelli's ruthlessness, Castiglione's beliefs wound up somewhere in > the middle of the others.