Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.
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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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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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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 chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms.
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There is nothing as likely to succeed as what the enemy believes you cannot attempt.
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The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
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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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As the observance of divine institutions is the cause of the greatness of republics, so the disregard of them produces their ruin; for where the fear of God is wanting, there the country will come to ruin, unless it be sustained the fear of the prince, which temporarily supply the want of religion.
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Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.
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The state is not an organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace...but merely a vehicle of power for the men and party in power.
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Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
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He who builds on the people, builds on the mud...
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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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A prince who is not himself wise cannot be wisely advised. . . . Good advice depends on the shrewdness of the prince who seeks it, and not the shrewdness of the prince on good advice.
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And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.
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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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The leader should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.
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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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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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It is better to act and repent than not to act and regret.
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There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.
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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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The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.