“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.”

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

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.

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

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

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.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense.

An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

Indians, of course, have no “theology,” and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

A man enters arrangements which it does not fall to him to determine, but only to learn and respect the rules.

And then I’ll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

The thing that interests me far more than anything is creating music, songwriting and arranging, and in that context drumming itself is a means to an end.

I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.