Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease.
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He who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows.
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A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.
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The innovator has for enemies all who have done well under the old, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
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When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.
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Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is worthless.
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...it is a base thing to look to others for your defense instead of depending upon yourself. That defense alone is effectual, sure, and durable which depends upon yourself and your own valor.
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I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
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Men ought either to be well treated, or crushed.
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I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.
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He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state and wishes to have it accepted, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.
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It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
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When they remain in garrison, soldiers are maintained with fear and punishment; when they are then led to war, with hope and reward.
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When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you.
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War brings out thieves and peace hangs them.
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A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.
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For the mob is always impressed by appearances and by results, and the world is composed of the mob.
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I hold it to be of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy; but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you...
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It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.
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Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.
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There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
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Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
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Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.
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All the armed prophets conquered; all the unarmed ones perished.