Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Politics have no relation to morals.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

The leader should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.

It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

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.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.

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.

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.