Niccolo Machiavelli

There is no avoiding war it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

Politics have no relation to morals.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

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.

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.

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 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.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

War is just when it is necessary arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.