It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLIMen should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.
More Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
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Before all else, be armed.
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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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So that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
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Benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.
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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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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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War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.
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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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One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
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Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
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Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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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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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.
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Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI