Words matter. These are the best Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.
To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.
War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack 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.
Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.
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.
A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.
We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
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.
Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.
Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.
Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
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.
One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.
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.
He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.
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.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.
Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
