“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”

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

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

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.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

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

So that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

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 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.

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.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.

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.

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.

As far as we’re concerned, there was no sporting organisation [that] should have anything to do with the sport in South Africa.

What I do is make myself this over-the-top character that people either find endearing or they think is a joke. Then I can do anything I want.

I was never geeky about anything.

It’s hard to be an artist. It’s hard to be anything. It’s hard to be.

If I don’t feel right about what I’m in, I don’t feel right about anything.

So I never thought of anything as making fun of it, but kind of reveling in the melodrama of it. It’s a melodrama.

But anything that you hear about Japan is nothing like what you see when you actually go over there and see it, you know, in a real situation.

There’s one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything.