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.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLIMen are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
More Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
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The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
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One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
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Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
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Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
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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.
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Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.
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It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
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The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.
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Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
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Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.
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He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.
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The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
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The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.
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Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
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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.
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Benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.
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We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
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A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man.
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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.
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It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.
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I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
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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.
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If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
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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.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI