Quotes by "Niccolo Machiavelli"

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

Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.

Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.

Men hesitate less to injure a man who makes himself loved than to injure one who makes himself feared, for their love is held by a chain of obligation which, because of men's wickedness, is broken on every occasion for the sake of selfish profit; but their fear is secured by a dread of punishment.

Fear is secured by a dread of punishment.

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

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

One never finds anything perfectly pure and ... exempt from danger.

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.

I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.

Is it better to be loved or feared?

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

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.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

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.

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

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.

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.

Before all else, be armed.