Quotes by Niccolo Machiavelli

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

Politics have no relation to morals.

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.

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

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

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.

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.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

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

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”