Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.
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The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
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Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion.
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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...
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One should never risk one's whole fortune unless supported by one's entire forces.
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The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.
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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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...as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure.
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Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.
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War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.
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I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
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Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.
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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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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.
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Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves...
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The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
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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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Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.
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I hope and hoping feeds my pain I weep and weeping feeds my failing heart I laugh but the laughter does not pass within I burn but the burning makes no mark outside.
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Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.