Machiavelli

It is not the well-being of individuals, but the general good, that makes cities great.

The common people are always caught by appearances and by the outcome of a thing; and in the world there are only the common people.

All men are bad and ever ready to use their inherent baseness whenever they have a free opportunity to do so.

It is not possible to provide against every inconvenience; but it is necessary to provide against the most important.

The greatest good that can be done to a city is to keep it united.

There is no surer way of holding an acquired state than by ruining it.

It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves.

For the nature of men is such that they are much more bound by the benefits they confer than by those they receive.

He who causes another to become powerful is ruined himself; because that power has been effected by him either by industry or by force, and both of these are suspicious to the one who has been raised to power.

It is always necessary to take the lesser evil as good.

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

The Roman state was ruined by the ambition of the people as much as by the ambition of the nobility.

To conquer a people, and then not to live among them, is to lose them.

Men are always more easily deceived when they are trying to deceive others.

A prince who is not himself wise cannot be well advised.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous.

It is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.

There are three kinds of intellect: one which comprehends by itself; another that discerns what another comprehends; and a third which comprehends neither by itself nor by the showing of another.

To be feared is much safer than to be loved.