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

This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

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

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

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

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.

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.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man.

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

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

But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

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.

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

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.