“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

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.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.

I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

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.

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.

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.

Legacy leaders are the only ones wiling to pay the price to fix a broken culture.

My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot.

Don’t tell me peace has broken out.

The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.

Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

The Boskin Commission… was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can’t afford it.

I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.

Physical pain is a fact that comes with living, just as illness or financial woes or broken relationships are facts. But misery is a state of mind, a reaction to the facts, that can be controlled or altered by an act of will.