Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.
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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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A prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline; because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.
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Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony...
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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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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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Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.
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Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent.
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A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.
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He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.
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It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline.
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One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves...
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For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm.
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One never finds anything perfectly pure and ... exempt from danger.
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Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
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One of the great secrets of the day is to know how to take possession of popular prejudices and passions, in such a way as to introduce a confusion of principles which makes impossible all understanding between those who speak the same language and have the same interests.
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I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness.
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Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion.
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He who is the cause of another's advancement is thereby the cause of his own ruin.
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(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.
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A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.
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Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.
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Benefits should be granted little by little, so that they may be better enjoyed.
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A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.