Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

You have to be a prince to understand the people, and you have to belong to the people to understand the princes.

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We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

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Tags : Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes , Mean Quotes , Done Quotes

When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you.

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Princes should delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures and keep in their own hands the means of winning favours.

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Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.

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All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

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Tags : Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Ambition Quotes

It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain.

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The forces of adversaries are more diminished by the loss of those who flee than of those who are killed.

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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 ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.

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For this is the tragedy of man circumstances change, but he does not.

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And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defense.

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Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.

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Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.

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The reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

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Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

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The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

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A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.

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Tags : Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes , Vices Quotes , Needs Quotes

Therefore, in order not to have to rob his subjects, to be able to defend himself, not to become poor and contemptible, and not to be forced to become rapacious, a prince must consider it of little importance if he incurs the name of miser, for this is one of the vices that permits him to rule.

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A prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers.

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