-
Men seldom rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
Without doubt, ferocious and disordered men are much weaker than timid and ordered ones. For order chases fear from men and disorder lessens ferocity.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
-
And it will always happen that he who is not your friend will request your neutrality and he who is your friend will ask you to declare yourself by taking up arms. And irresolute princes, in order to avoid present dangers, follow the neutral road most of the time, and most of the time they are ruined.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a greater obligation to their benefactor.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
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.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
One can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you, they turn away.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
For whoever conquers a free Town, and does not demolish it, commits a great Error, and may expect to be ruin 'd himself.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
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.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
-
Never do your enemy a minor injury.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm ... partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them...
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
Appear as you may wish to be..
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
-
Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
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.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
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.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
-
It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli -
Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves...
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli