Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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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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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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When fortune wishes to bring mighty events to a successful conclusion, she selects some man of spirit and ability who knows how to seize the opportunity she offers.
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The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom.
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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.
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I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words toward anyone, for neither diminishes the strength of the enemy.
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The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
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They have not any difficulties on the way up because they fly, but they have many when they reach the summit.
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A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.
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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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He who builds on the people, builds on the mud...
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He who would foresee what is to happen should look to what has happened: for all that is has its counterpart in time past.
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Cruelties should be committed all at once.
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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.
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Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
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The leader should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.
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...the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
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One man should not be afraid of improving his posessions, lest they be taken away from him, or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. Rather, the Prince should be ready to reward men who want to do these things and those who endeavour in any way to increase the prosperity of their city or their state.
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In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.
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Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
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One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you.
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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.
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The ends justifies the means.
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It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.