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.
Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
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.
I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
