Quotes By Niccolo Machiavelli

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

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.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

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.

Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Before all else, be armed.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

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.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.