Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelliwas an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer. He has often been called the founder of modern political science. He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth3 May 1469
CityFlorence, Italy
CountryItaly
Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.
Politics have no relation to morals.
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.
Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.
A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a Prince who 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
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.
each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.
If One Wishes That a Sect of a Republic Live a Long Time, It Is Necessary to Draw It Back Often toward Its Principle
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
May princes know then that they begin to lose (their) state at that hour in which they begin to break the laws and those customs and usages that are ancient and under which men have lived for a long time
Let no one oppose this belief of mine with that well-worn proverb: 'He who builds on the people builds on mud
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past.
The question is, then, do we try to make things easy on ourselves or do we try to make things easy on our customers, whoever they may be?