Machiavelli Political Quotes

#1. Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.

George Will

#2. No matter how different our First Ladies have been - and as individual women they have ranged from recluses to vibrant hostesses to political manipulators on a par with Machiavelli - they have all shared the unnerving experience of facing a job they did not choose.

Margaret Truman Daniel

#3. Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#4. Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called self-interestedness. This was not a

George Will

#5. The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs.

Silvio Berlusconi

#6. T happens in all human affairs that we never seek to escape one mischief without falling into another. Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage, and in accepting a less evil as a good.

Niccolo Machiavelli