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.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLIThe 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.
More Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes
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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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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.
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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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Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
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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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No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
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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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Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.
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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.
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A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man.
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But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.
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Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.
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The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
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Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI