Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLINature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
More Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
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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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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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The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
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The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
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It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
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We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
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Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense.
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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.
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The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
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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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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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Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.
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Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
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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.
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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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Before all else, be armed.
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This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
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A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
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The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
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It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
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A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
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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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Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
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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.
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Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
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One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI