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
Politics have no relation to morals.
....for friendships that are acquired by a price and not by greatness and nobility of character are purchased but are not owned, and at the proper moment they cannot be spent.
....nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.
....it cannot be called ingenuity to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can aquire power but not glory.
....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease.
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
The innovator has for enemies all who have done well under the old, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
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.