Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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Never lead your soldiers to battle if you have not first confirmed their spirit and known them to be without fear and ordered; and never test them except when you see that they hope to win.
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Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
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Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.
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There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.
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For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.
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For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.
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...the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour.
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A son could bear with great complacency, the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair.
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Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
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There is nothing as likely to succeed as what the enemy believes you cannot attempt.
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A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.
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You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
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Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.
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We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.
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The ends justifies the means.
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The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms.
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You have to be a prince to understand the people, and you have to belong to the people to understand the princes.
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....nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.
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How perilous it is to free a people who prefer slavery.
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...people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.