Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.
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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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A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.
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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 incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of 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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Good order makes men bold, and confusion, cowards.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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He who builds on the people, builds on the mud...
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The ends justifies the means.
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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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Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
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You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
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Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow so that everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.