A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLINo enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
More Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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Politics have no relation to morals.
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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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Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.
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Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
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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.
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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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It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
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War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.
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Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
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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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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.
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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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Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.
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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.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI