Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes

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Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions...Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress, and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.

Niccolò Machiavelli
A multitude is strong while it holds together, but so soon as each of those who compose it begins ro think of his own private danger, it becomes weak and contemptible.

Niccolò Machiavelli
A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.

Niccolò Machiavelli
He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.

Niccolò Machiavelli
A wise ruler should rely on what is under his own control, not on what is under the control of others.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Although deceit is detestable in all other things, yet in the conduct of war it is laudable and honorable; and a commander who vanquishes an enemy by stratagem is equally praised with one who gains victory by force.

Niccolò Machiavelli
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.

Niccolò Machiavelli
In our own days we have seen no princes accomplish great results save those who have been accounted miserly.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Benefits should be granted little by little, so that they may be better enjoyed.

Niccolò Machiavelli
He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.

Niccolò Machiavelli
We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Whoever is the cause of another becoming powerful, is ruined himself; for that power is produced by him either through craft or force; and both of these are suspected by the one who has been raised to power.

Niccolò Machiavelli
A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

Niccolò Machiavelli
And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.

Niccolò Machiavelli
The cause of the bad and of the good fortune of men is the way in which their method of working fits the times.

Niccolò Machiavelli
A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Niccolò Machiavelli
The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.

Niccolò Machiavelli
For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.

Niccolò Machiavelli
How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation.

Niccolò Machiavelli
And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame.

Niccolò Machiavelli
For as when much superfluous matter has gathered in simple bodies, nature makes repeated efforts to remove and purge it away, thereby promoting the health of these bodies, so likewise as regards that composite body the human race, when every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove elsewhere, every region being equally crowded and over-peopled, and when human craft and wickedness have reached their highest pitch, it must needs come about that the world will purge herself in one or another of these three ways, to the end that men, becoming few and contrite, may amend their lives and live with more convenience.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Niccolò Machiavelli
They fight for the sake of ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that, no matter the rank to which a man may rise, he never abandons it.

Niccolò Machiavelli
But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them.

Niccolò Machiavelli