Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes

Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.

Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

If someone puts up the argument that King Louis gave the Romagna to Pope Alexander, and the kingdom of Naples to Spain, in order to avoid a war, I would answer as I did before: that you should never let things get out of hand in order to avoid war. You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.

Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed.

The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together.