Men seldom rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.
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.
The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
There are three kinds of minds: first those that attain insight and understanding of things by their own means, then those that recognize what is right when others explain it to them, and finally those that are capable of neither one nor the other.
For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame.
Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.
Hence it happened that all the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed perished.
[It., Di qui nacque che tutti li profeti armati vincero, e li disarmati rovinarono.]
The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can.but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.