Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes

161 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
It has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain as fame or power not founded on its own strength.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised....

Niccolò Machiavelli
Nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.

Niccolò Machiavelli
Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage,

Niccolò Machiavelli
For friendships that are acquired by a price and not by greatness and nobility of character are purchased but are not owned, and at the proper moment they cannot be spent.

Niccolò Machiavelli
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.

Niccolò Machiavelli