Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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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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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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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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Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.
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Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.
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If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
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It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
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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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....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease.
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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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So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.
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A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.
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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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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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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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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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Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
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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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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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For as laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there is need of good manner that laws may be maintained. [It., Perche, cosi come i buoni costumi, per mantenersi, hanno bisogno delli leggi; cosi le leggi per ossevarsi, hanno bisogno de' buoni costumi.]
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Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.
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There are three kinds of brains: One understands of itself, another can be taught to understand, and the third can neither understand to itself or be taught to understand.
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A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.