Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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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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I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
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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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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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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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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.
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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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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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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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Good order makes men bold, and confusion, cowards.
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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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A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.
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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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Men generally decide upon a middle course, which is most hazardous, for they know neither how to be entirely good nor entirely bad.
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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 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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Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
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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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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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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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The leader should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.
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Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.
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He who builds on the people, builds on the mud...